Asac 2005 Toronto, Ontario Information Technology Outsourcing from a Business Strategy Perspective

The objective of this paper is to underline the impact of business strategy on the level and type of information technology (IT) outsourcing used by an organization. Past research in IT outsourcing has mainly focused on the transaction itself, without investigating the strategic characteristics of the organization. When observing organizations, one cannot avoid noticing that those of similar size, dealing in the same markets, can make very different decisions with respect to IT outsourcing. Since major organizational decisions should reflect a company’s business strategy, there is a need for scrutinizing the decisions to outsource IT activities and evaluating how aligned these decisions are with the business strategy. Therefore this study investigates the characteristics of organizations with regards to their outsourced IT activities, the structure of IT outsourcing contracts, and their business strategy.