Effect of Partnership Quality on IS Outsourcing Success: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Validation

Abstract:

Recently, increasing attention has been paid to building successful partnerships in information systems (IS) outsourcing. This study establishes partnership quality as a key predictor of outsourcing success. We propose a theoretical framework for outsourcing partnership based on a social, rather than an economic, perspective. We identifY the partnership-related variables from the relevant literature and clarifY the concept of partnership quality by distinguishing between its components and its determinants. We then examine the impact of partnership quality on outsourcing success. Hypotheses on partnership quality were tested for 74 outsourcing relationships between 36 service receivers and 54 service providers. Results indicate that partnership quality may serve as a key predictor of outsourcing success. Partnership quality was found to be positively influenced by factors such as participation, communication, information sharing, and top management support, and negatively affected by age of relationship and mutual dependency.

Key Words and Phrases:

• information systems outsourcing
• outsourcing partnership
• outsourcing success
• partnership quality

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jae-Nam Lee

Jae-Nam Lee is a Manager of LG-EDS Systems, which is one of the outsourcing service providers in Korea, and a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate School of Management of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul. He received his M.S. degree in MIS from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His research areas are information systems outsourcing, interorganizational relationships, project management, and supply-chain management. He has published in Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and presented at a DSI conference.

Young-Gul Kim

Young-Gul Kim is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Management of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul. He received his B.S. and M.S. in industrial engineering from the Seoul National University, Korea, and his Ph.D. degree in MIS from the University of Minnesota. His active research areas are IS architecture development, data and process modeling, IT management, and knowledge management. His publications have appeared in journals such as Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Information Systems Management, Database, and others. He has also presented several papers at IClS, HICSS, and DSI conferences.