Knowledge Exchange in Outsourced ISD Projects: the boundary Spanning Approach

This study is focused on intraand inter-organizational communication managed by client organizations in outsourced information system development (ISD) projects. Previous research shows the importance of internal communication in an organization when it adopts an integrated IS. Outsourcing literature also notes the importance of managing communication and knowledge exchange with the vendor. However, these two types of communication have not been studied together, and their conceptual commonalities have been overlooked. The proposed research makes a unique contribution to the literature by studying the connection between internal and external communication in the same organization, and assessing the impact of yet third communication type, client’s routine internal communication, on client’s behavior during an outsourced project. I show why different types of communication in an outsourcing organization may require different approaches to knowledge and to the process of its exchange, and explain why building successful communication practices in an outsourced project is more challenging for some organizations than to others. This is an original theoretical contribution of this study to outsourcing research. Quantitative analysis of data collected through a survey instrument will make a sound methodological contribution to boundary spanning theoretical reasoning which has been supported so far by interpretive qualitative research alone.