یک مطالعه تجربی درباره ی منشأ عملکرد رابطه ای فروشنده در برون سپاری سیستم های اطلاعاتی برون مرزی

Despite keen interest in long-term strategic outsourcing and attention to factors affecting outsourcing success, the examination on relational performance, i.e., the difference between a vendor's performance with a particular client and that with its average client base, can be hardly found. This study adopts a relational view to offshore information systems (IS) outsourcing from a vendor's perspective to explore the source of relational performance. Results highlight the importance of client-specific capabilities and trust as a self-enforcing governance mechanism in a vendor's relational performance in terms of service quality. Project management and client-specific capabilities act as substitute for each other in affecting relational service quality. In addition, while trust and learning about client contribute to client-specific capabilities, trust is also positively related to learning about client. These findings enrich our understanding of the source of outsourcing relational performance and contribute to the literatures on vendors’ capabilities in IS outsourcing.

Offshore information systems (IS) outsourcing is a contractual arrangement involving transferring IS development and related services to overseas vendors. In recent years, there has been an increasing trend for firms to realize their strategic aspiration through outsourcing initiatives. However, the success of such initiatives is largely determined by the vendor's value proposition (Levina & Ross, 2003). In light of a growing popularity of long-term strategic partnership-oriented outsourcing (Lee and Kim, 1999, Quinn, 1999 and Simeon, 2010), it is likely that a vendor can provide super value proposition for a particular client over time, with the same capabilities. It reflects gains exclusive to a particular relationship, which can persist over time (Dyer & Hatch, 2006). It is referred to as relational performance (Mesquita, Anand, & Brush, 2008), which is the difference between a vendor's performance with a particular client and that with its average client base (Dyer & Singh, 1998). Prior studies have examined the effects of vendor relationships on a client's competitive advantage (Kotabe, Martin, & Domoto, 2003), and advocated the importance of effective client–vendor relationship management for outsourcing success (Berger and Lewis, 2011, Levina and Ross, 2003 and Rai et al., 2009). However, it is not clear under what inter-firm linkage conditions a vendor can provide super value proposition for a given client relative to its average client base, i.e., relational performance. Although various aspects of outsourcing outcomes and their determinants have been investigated (Berger and Lewis, 2011, Blumenberg et al., 2009, Dibbern et al., 2004, Ethiraj et al., 2005 and Lacity et al., 2010), relational performance and its impacting factors have been largely overlooked in the extant literature.

This study adopts the relational view to explore the source of relational performance heterogeneity in offshore IS outsourcing, in terms of vendors’ service quality. Results indicate that relationships with client-specific capabilities and trust as an informal self-enforcing safeguarding mechanism will create superior relational performance, i.e., the performance gains above the performance between a vendor and its average clients. The importance of trust for outsourcing performance has been well documented in prior studies (e.g., Mao, Lee, & Deng, 2008). However, these studies are mostly concerned with the impact on re-deployable performance. Our results show that trust, as an informal safeguarding mechanism, is also important for relational performance. Results do not support the hypothesis that client-specific capabilities are more important for relational service quality than project management capabilities. Project management capabilities are also important for relational performance. One potential reason may be that the current vendors located in emerging markets such as China are still under the constraints of weak project management capabilities (Jarvenpaa & Mao, 2008). At present, the re-deployable project management capabilities can be a basic condition for providing a satisfactory service level for a given client. Additionally, results indicate that the two types of capabilities play a substitute role in relational performance. The potential reason may be that there exits a combination of lower project management capabilities and higher client-specific capabilities, or a combination of lower client-specific capabilities and higher project management capabilities in achieving a high level of relational performance (Zhao & Stank, 2003).