Towards a Taxonomy for Globally Distributed Work

In the business process management parlance, different engagement models, such as bodyshopping, outsourcing, offshoring, etc. have evolved between the service providers and their clients over the last decade. The common denominator in these models is the distribution of work and/or that of workers across the globe. There is a gap in defining a framework to define different manifestations of globally distributed work. In this exploratory research, a unifying framework is proposed to characterize globally distributed work in order identify and explain different vendor-client engagement models. The proposed framework is applicable for any kind of work that is distributed across the globe. In this paper, the specific case of software development processes has been explained in terms of the type of the application, the type and location of the developer, and the holder of intellectual property (IP) rights. The role of IP rights in the evolution client-vendor engagement models has been explained.