• Title/Summary/Keyword: Matched Sample of Client and Vendor

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An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Governance-Peripheral Knowledge Fit on the Performance of IT Project Outsourcing: Focusing on the Perceptual Gap between Client and Vendor (IT 프로젝트 아웃소싱에서 거버넌스-주변지식의 조화가 프로젝트 성과에 미치는 영향에 대한 실증 분석: 고객사-공급사 간 인지차를 중심으로)

  • Seonyoung Shim
    • Information Systems Review
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    • v.19 no.1
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    • pp.147-168
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    • 2017
  • We investigated perceptual similarity and the difference between client and vendor in information technology (IT) outsourcing projects. Specifically, we focused on each player's perception of how the fit of governance and peripheral knowledge affects the performance of IT project outsourcing. For 107 IT projects, we surveyed both client and vendor in the same IT projects and compared the responses of each side. Through a dyadic analysis, we first found that both client and vendor put more weight on the vendor's peripheral knowledge than that of the client as a positive influencer of project performance. However, regarding the governance style of an IT project, client and vendor showed completely different perspectives. The client believed that the vendor's peripheral knowledge positively contributes to the performance of IT project under the governance of outcome control. However, the vendor showed that its peripheral knowledge creates synergy effects under the governance of process control. Our interpretation of the perceptual similarity and difference between client and vendor delivers managerial implications for businesses that process IT projects.

An Empirical Study on the Importance of Psychological Contract Commitment in Information Systems Outsourcing (정보시스템 아웃소싱에서 심리적 계약 커미트먼트의 중요성에 대한 연구)

  • Kim, Hyung-Jin;Lee, Sang-Hoon;Lee, Ho-Geun
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.49-81
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    • 2007
  • Research in the IS (Information Systems) outsourcing has focused on the importance of legal contracts and partnerships between vendors and clients. Without detailed legal contracts, there is no guarantee that an outsourcing vendor would not indulge in self-serving behavior. In addition, partnerships can supplement legal contracts in managing the relationship between clients and vendors legal contracts by itself cannot deal with all the complexity and ambiguity involved with IS outsourcing relationships. In this paper, we introduce a psychological contract (between client and vendor) as an important variable for IS outsourcing success. A psychological contract refers to individual's mental beliefs about his or her mutual obligations in a contractual relationship (Rousseau, 1995). A psychological contract emerges when one party believes that a promise of future returns has been made, a contribution has been given, and thus, an obligation has been created to provide future benefits (Rousseau, 1989). An employmentpsychological contract, which is a widespread concept in psychology, refers to employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship, i.e. mutual obligations, values, expectations and aspirations that operate over and above the formal contract of employment (Smithson and Lewis, 2003). Similar to the psychological contract between an employer and employee, IS outsourcing involves a contract and a set of mutual obligations between client and vendor (Ho et al., 2003). Given the lack of prior research on psychological contracts in the IS outsourcing context, we extend such studies and give insights through investigating the role of psychological contracts between client and vendor. Psychological contract theory offers highly relevant and sound theoretical lens for studying IS outsourcing management because of its six distinctive principles: (1) it focuses on mutual (rather than one-sided) obligations between contractual parties, (2) it's more comprehensive than the concept of legal contract, (3) it's an individual-level construct, (4) it changes over time, (5) it affects organizational behaviors, and (6) it's susceptible to organizational factors (Koh et al., 2004; Rousseau, 1996; Coyle-Shapiro, 2000). The aim of this paper is to put the concept, psychological contract commitment (PCC), under the spotlight, by finding out its mediating effects between legal contracts/partnerships and IS outsourcing success. Our interest is in the psychological contract commitment (PCC) or commitment to psychological contracts, which is the extent to which a partner consistently and deeply concerns with what the counter-party believes as obligations during the IS project. The basic premise for the hypothesized relationship between PCC and success is that for outsourcing success, client and vendor should continually commit to mutual obligations in which both parties believe, rather than to only explicit obligations. The psychological contract commitment playsa pivotal role in evaluating a counter-party because it reflects what one party really expects from the other. If one party consistently shows high commitment to psychological contracts, the other party would evaluate it positively. This will increase positive reciprocation efforts of the other party, thus leading to successful outsourcing outcomes (McNeeley and Meglino, 1994). We have used matched sample data for this research. We have collected three responses from each set of a client and a vendor firm: a project manager of the client firm, a project member from the vendor firm with whom the project manager cooperated, and an end-user of the client company who actually used the outsourced information systems. Special caution was given to the data collection process to avoid any bias in responses. We first sent three types of questionnaires (A, Band C) to each project manager of the client firm, asking him/her to answer the first type of questionnaires (A).