Cultural Intelligence and Relationship Quality on Offshore IS Outsourcing Success: From The Vendor’s Perspective

Nowadays, Offshore Information Systems (IS) Outsourcing is developing tremendously, despite glutting with unsuccessful and disappointing projects. In order to implement offshore IS outsourcing projects successfully, it requires all the parties involved to not only attempt to cross the boundaries of different countries or organizations, but also confront the consequent challenges brought by intercultural differences. As a more proactive and initiative side in outsourcing relationships, vendors are always supposed to take more responsibility for the success of offshore IS outsourcing projects. This study explores the potential influence of cultural intelligence on offshore IS outsourcing success from a vendor’s perspective. In addition, relationship quality, a widely investigated concept in IT outsourcing research, is introduced as a mediator to further test the relationship between cultural intelligence and offshore IS outsourcing success. A survey study based on 92 projects collected from 20 vendors in Mainland China is then performed. The results indicate that cultural intelligence is positively related to relationship quality as well as offshore IS outsourcing success. The mediation test further reveals that relationship quality partially mediates the relationship between cultural intelligence and offshore IS outsourcing success.