Are we already in a mature ITO market? A longitudinal study on the effects of market maturity on ITO vendor project performance

Studies on information technology outsourcing (ITO) have shown different results for the influence of prior interaction and contract type on the project performance of the ITO vendor. The ITO market maturity could provide an explanation for these differences. However, it is not clear how to separate the ITO market into different maturity phases to gain insight into any possible effect maturity might have on project performance. We used a large dataset from an ITO vendor to analyze this research gap. We find that the ITO market has increased its maturity and can be separated into an immature phase, occurring between 1997 and 2001, a transition phase, occurring between 2002 and 2008 and a third phase which occurred after 2008. This identification of different phases of ITO market maturity will contribute to a deeper understanding of the influence of ITO market maturity on the project performance of ITO vendors.