Knowledge in software-maintenance outsourcing projects: beyond integration of business and technical knowledge

Krancher, Oliver; Dibbern, Jens (2015). Knowledge in software-maintenance outsourcing projects: beyond integration of business and technical knowledge. In: 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 4406-4415). IEEE Computer Society

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Knowledge processes are critical to outsourced software projects. According to outsourcing research, outsourced software projects succeed if they manage to integrate the client’s business knowledge and the vendor’s technical knowledge. In this paper, we submit that this view may not be wrong, but incomplete in a significant part of outsourced software work, which is software maintenance. Data from six software-maintenance outsourcing transitions indicate that more important than business or technical knowledge can be application knowledge, which vendor engineers acquire over time during practice. Application knowledge was the dominant knowledge during knowledge transfer activities and its acquisition enabled vendor staff to solve maintenance tasks. We discuss implications for widespread assumptions in outsourcing research.

Item Type:

 Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

 03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Department of Business Management > Institute of Information Systems > Information Engineering

UniBE Contributor:

 Krancher, Oliver Jürgen, Dibbern, Jens

Subjects:

 000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
600 Technology > 650 Management & public relations
300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 330 Economics

Publisher:

 IEEE Computer Society

Projects:

 [230] Knowledge Transfer in IT Outsourcing

Language:

 English

Submitter:

 Oliver Jürgen Krancher

Date Deposited:

 06 Jan 2015 14:40

Last Modified:

 02 Mar 2023 23:25

Uncontrolled Keywords:

 Knowledge Transfer, Knowledge Integration, Software Maintenance, Outsourcing, Application Knowledge, Business Knowledge, Technical Knowledge

BORIS DOI:

 10.7892/boris.61338

URI:

 https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/61338

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