جنبه های تصمیم گیری برون سپاری مورد توجه بخش های IT در شرکت های برزیلی

The study of Information Technology (IT) outsourcing is relevant because companies are outsourcing their activities more than ever. An important IT outsourcing research area is the decision-making process. In other words, the comprehension of how companies decide about outsourcing their IT operations is relevant from research point of view. Therefore, the objective of this study is to understand the decision-making process used by Brazilian companies when outsourcing their IT operations. An analysis of the literature that refers to this subject showed that six aspects are usually considered by companies on the evaluation of IT outsourcing service alternatives. This research verified how these six aspects are considered by Brazilian companies on IT outsourcing decisions. The survey showed that Brazilian companies consider all the six aspects, but each of them has a different level of importance. The research also grouped the aspects according to their level of importance and interdependency, using factorial analysis to understand the logic behind IT outsourcing decision process.

The outsourcing movement is growing in all sectors of the economy, mainly in the Information Technology (IT) services area. In Brazil, the number of IT outsourced professionals, functions or activities increased by 127% in 10 years (Portal Exame, 2006). This movement shows the fact that companies are outsourcing their IT activities more than ever. Considering such scenario, it is important to study and understand the main aspects of this movement and its consequences, mainly in countries where this increase is more significant. IT outsourcing has been used by companies over the last 50 years and researched by the academy since then (Vassiliadis et al., 2006). Many companies (specially small and medium enterprises) depends on new IT applications to maintain their competitiveness and outsourcing IT is, frequently, the only way to implement these applications (Chen and Wang, 2008; Offodile and Abdel-Malek, 2002). The decision to outsource IT, in different degrees and in different ways, has been an important focus in IT research and practice. In the last years, the decision to switch vendors or to backsource (or insourcing) has gained the interest of the academy (Whitten and Leidner, 2006). Therefore, researches concerning the aspects related to IT outsourcing decisions are important in order to develop knowledge about this subject. The purpose of this study is to understand if Brazilian companies consider the same IT outsourcing decision aspects that are described in the literature and, in case they do so, this research tries to find out the level of importance attributed to each decision aspect.

Table 4 shows the SPSS output for the internal consistency test for the measuring procedure used by this study. According to Forza (2002), if α≥0.6 the measure can be accepted. However, α≥0.7 should be the threshold and α≥0.8 shows that the measure instrument is very reliable. Therefore, the values presented in Table 4 show that the measure instrument used by this study is validated, and the information that will be presented later is, to some extent, reliable. By granting the reliability of the measure instrument, it is possible to evaluate the data obtained in the responded forms. The data presented in Table 2 show how companies consider each of the six aspects. With this information, it is possible to conclude that strategic issues are more frequently considered than benchmark. Costs and contracts are equally considered, as new management forms and risks, and they are at a level of consideration between strategic issues and benchmarking. Similar information can be obtained from Fig. 1. Although Fig. 1 shows the level of importance of each of the six proposed aspects, it can be shown that strategic issues, contracts and costs are aspects that have to be evaluated in an IT outsourcing decision. In addition, risks and management forms are very important aspects that should be considered in an IT outsourcing decision. Finally, the benchmarking aspect is important but should be relegated as a complementary aspect in an IT outsourcing evaluation.