Multisourcing Decision in Application Services Outsourcing: Do the Smart Get Smarter?

Krancher, Oliver; Stürmer, Matthias (2017). Multisourcing Decision in Application Services Outsourcing: Do the Smart Get Smarter? (Unpublished). In: The 11th Global Sourcing Workshop. La Thuile Italy. 22.-25.02.2017.

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Multisourcing—the delegation of interdependent tasks to multiple vendors—is receiving increasing attention in practice and in research. Yet, we know little about the circumstances under which organizations decide for multisourcing. In this paper, we develop and test a theoretical framework to explain multisourcing decisions in application services projects. Results from a multi-level analysis of 921 decisions made by 175 public organizations suggest that multisourcing decisions can be explained to a significant extent by knowledge-related benefits and challenges associated with multisourcing. Specifically, we find empirical support for the assertion that clients choose multisourcing when they seek best-of-breed generic vendor knowledge. However, clients refrain from multisourcing when they lack strong capabilities in managing outsourcing projects and when projects require vendors to acquire high amounts of client-specific knowledge. The access to superior capabilities through multisourcing seems thus to be contingent on the existing knowledge of client and vendor.

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 > Information Management
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, Stürmer, Matthias Emmanuel

Subjects:

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

Projects:

[639] IT-Multisourcing Official URL

Language:

English

Submitter:

Oliver Jürgen Krancher

Date Deposited:

11 May 2017 08:47

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:29

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Multisourcing, outsourcing decisions, transaction cost economics, knowledge-based view, knowledge specificity, application services

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.97429

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/97429

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