Outsourcing Terms: A Literature Review from an ISD Perspective

Information Technology (IT) has made it easier for firms to communicate globally. Improved IT capabilities and the increased global collaboration have been drivers of the growth of IT ‘outsourcing’. This growth has resulted in a variety of IT ‘outsourcing’ terms used to denote both global and domestic client–IT-supplier relationships. An introductory literature review showed that there exist no common standard definitions of ‘outsourcing’ terms used for describing the contracting of ISD activities between a client and an IT-supplier. This may lead to confusion. The first purpose chosen for the paper is therefore to review how the variety of commonly used ISD ‘outsourcing’ terms are defined in the literature. Based on these identified definition differences, the second purpose is then to propose a structured set of definitions of ISD ‘outsourcing’ terms.