Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2014
Abstract
Firms have outsourced since the infant days of manufacturing. Many firms find that the ability to fill gaps in their expertise or gaps in human capital with individuals outside the organization is crucial to keep pace with customer demand. Much has been published about the decision making process and resulting impacts of outsourcing from business operations point of view, with financial considerations being extensively explored. But less has been published about the relationship between outsourcing and the identity of the organization engaged in outsourcing. Worldwide IT spending was estimated to be $2 Trillion in 2013 with approximately 12% directed to outsourcing services. The potential impact of outsourcing on a given IT organization is significant, as individuals outside the organization are brought in to keep pace with customer demand and new service development. Therefore this study examines changes in the identity of IT organizations being the target of outsourcing. Semi-structured interviews among 25 senior IT and corporate staff managers offer the following findings: 1) an IT organization's identity can be oriented along a continuum of strong and weak; 2) IT organizations outsource in different ways based on their identity orientation; 3) Outsourcing can influence the IT identity approach taken to be Intentional or Emergent; and 4) IT organizations possess patterns of Emergent and Intentional approaches to identity. These findings create a conceptual framework for practitioners regarding cognitive awareness of identity in IT organizations in outsourcing decision making and for researchers who look to further what is known about IT outsourcing and its impact on an organization's identity.
Keywords
manufactures--contracting out, information technology, management, Weatherhead School of Management, outsourcing, organizational identity, decision making, IT
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
McGuire, Carol, "Does An IT Organization Transform Its Identity When Engaged in Outsourcing?" (2014). Student Scholarship. 172.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/172