Designing Organizational Models for Service Integration in a Multi-sourcing Context

With the persistent shift towards multi-sourcing, the complexity of service delivery is continuously increasing. This presents new challenges for clients who now have to integrate interdependent services from multiple providers. As other functions, service integration is subject to make-or-buy decisions: clients can either build the required capabilities themselves or delegate service integration to external functions. To define detailed organizational models, one requires understanding of specific tasks and how to allocate them. Based on a qualitative and quantitative expert study, we analyze generic organizational models, and identify key service integration tasks. The allocation of these tasks to clients or their providers generates a set of granular organizational structures. We analyze drivers for delegating these tasks, and develop typical allocations in practice. Our work contributes to expanding the theoretical foundations of service integration. Moreover, our findings will assist clients to design their service integration organization, and to build more effective multi-sourcing solutions.