• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.177-197
• /
• 2016

Information technology (IT) outsourcing is considered an effective strategy to manage and maintain organizational technologies in a rapidly changing business environment. In particular, to meet diverse market needs, many organizations that outsource their IT functions practice a multi-vendor approach as their main outsourcing strategy. Although a few studies have been conducted about the multi-vendor approach, most previous works primarily emphasized conceptual arguments and normative prescriptions. In addition, scant attention has been directed toward the relational structure between the client and multiple vendors in the multi-vendor approach and its implications for outsourcing success. This study proposes a model from the transaction cost perspective by conceptualizing two dominant relational structures of the multi-vendor approach, namely, single-vendor dominant model and the multi-vendor dominant model, and hypothesizing their relationships with two outsourcing outcomes, project success and user satisfaction. The proposed model is examined using the data collected from 246 companies that have implemented multi-vendor outsourcing. As expected, results indicate that the single-vendor dominant model has a more significant impact on project success, whereas the multi-vendor dominant model has a more significant impact on user satisfaction. The study concludes with the theoretical implications and directions for future research.