A Commentary on: "The role of transaction cost economics in information technology outsourcing research: A meta-analysis of the choice of contract type"

We thank the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Strategic Information Systems for inviting us to comment on Shermann et al.’s (2016) article that addresses the question of the appropriateness of Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) for explaining firms’ choices about information technology (IT) outsourcing; here the choice of contract type. In brief, the article addresses the question of whether mixed results obtained by IS researchers who have used TCT to explain the choice of contract type are due to a misappropriation of the theory – more precisely the operationalization of task uncertainty – or to the unsuitability of TCT to some aspects of the IT outsourcing phenomenon. Before we offer our comments, a preamble is necessary. Although we have used TCT – and other theories from the field of Industrial Organization, such as Agency Theory – in our research on IT outsourcing (e.g., Aubert et al., 2012), our aim is not to defend the relevance or appropriateness of TCT. Neither do we aim to discourage researchers from developing theories indigenous to the domain of IT outsourcing. On the contrary! As one of the authors of this commentary has advocated elsewhere, theory development is much needed in the IS field (Rivard, 2014). We deem it essential, however, to warn researchers from rejecting a theory based on mistaken motives.