Theorizing the IT Governance Role in IT Sourcing Research

Previous research has identified significant risks involved in IT sourcing, which can undermine business performance. IT governance research has proposed mechanisms to mitigate some of these risks. While this relationship seems evident, it remains unexplored in most IT sourcing research. Our review of IT sourcing articles published in the top three IS journals shows that, only 48% addressed governance issues, and fewer (36%) modelled its effect on IT sourcing. As such, opportunities to address IT sourcing issues from the perspective of IT governance are underutilized. We identify this gap, and provide a roadmap for researchers to explicitly tie IT sourcing to IT governance. We contribute by developing a framework to explore a large body of work and systematically analyzed and categorized it to reveal theoretical underpinnings and major findings. Furthermore, we identify gaps in the literature relating to specific governance mechanisms, and propose research questions to motivate future research.