یک بررسی چند سطحی از برون سپاری فناوری اطلاعات

This study proposes and tests a model of the information technology (IT) outsourcing decision that includes antecedents of both transaction costs and production costs. Production costs show the most robust influence on governance. Skills required to execute the activities, interdependence between the activities, and firm-level characteristics – uncertainty and knowledge intensity – are the main explanatory variables of the decision. Transaction-level uncertainty is the only transaction cost variable found to influence the decision.

Deciding whether an activity should be conducted within the firm or contracted out is an ongoing concern for both research and practice, including in the information systems (IS) field (Lacity et al., 2010). Transaction cost theory (TCT) has been influential in explaining this decision in many domains. Under TCT, the choice of the governance structure depends on two sets of costs: transaction costs (searching for suppliers, negotiating contracts, monitoring and evaluating performance) and production costs, the sum of which firms aim to minimize (Williamson, 1985). Interestingly, while TCT explicitly mentions both transaction costs and production costs, the vast majority of TCT-based studies focus on transaction costs and transaction-level variables (Geyskens et al., 2006) and omit production costs. In the IS field, an exception of note in terms of costs is Ang and Straub (1998) who found that supplier production cost advantage led to a greater degree of IT outsourcing and that transaction costs were negatively related to the degree of outsourcing. In terms of variable level, Loebbecke and Huyskens (2006) examined the role of firm-level variables and found that capability-related elements (relevance of applications and vulnerability associated with capabilities) had significant influence on the outsourcing decision. The literature on the boundary of the firm suggests that production costs can be accounted for in explanations of outsourcing decisions along three perspectives: economies of scale, coordination of interdependent activities, and capabilities (Langlois and Robertson, 1995). Economies of scale provide an unsatisfactory explanation (Langlois and Robertson, 1995). In IS, Lacity and Willcocks (1998) showed that economies of scale did not explain outsourcing decisions: comparable percentages of large and small datacenters achieved cost savings through outsourcing, and when they selected insourcing, small and large datacenters were able to reach cost saving targets.

This paper presents a model explaining the IT outsourcing decision. It considers both transaction costs and production costs, and includes a multi-level analysis. The results suggest that the governance structure of an activity is influenced by transaction-level and firm-level variables simultaneously, and that the influence of each variable depends on the type of activities. Governance of the activities that are closer to the firm’s core (management and operations) was driven by variables influencing production costs. Transaction costs did not influence these activities. However, transaction costs influenced maintenance activities, which are less affected by firm-level considerations. On a theoretical level, the results offer a plausible explanation for apparently conflicting past results. Some studies found that uncertainty decreased the use of outsourcing while others found that it increased it. Results suggest that transaction-level uncertainty (like measurement problems and complexity) might reduce the use of outsourcing for some activities while firm-level uncertainty increases the reliance on external suppliers. Some findings highlight unique characteristics of IT outsourcing. For instance, firms in knowledge intensive industries using less outsourcing than firms in less knowledge intensive ones suggests that information processing activities might be treated somewhat differently from other activities. Overall results underline the importance to take into account simultaneously variables influencing transaction costs and production costs, the latter including variables at the transactional-level and the firm-level. Future research will benefit from taking into account multiple levels in order to further develop a comprehensive theory of the firm.