It Outsourcing At The Stage Of Psychological Contract: Governance-In-Practice And Governance-In-Contract

The governance of IT outsourcing (ITO) has been identified as an essential determinant for ITO success. While prior studies have shed light on how to determine effective governance to inform practice, little research attention has been reversely initiated from practice when certain governance model is implemented. In this paper, I have addressed two concepts of Governance-in-Contract (GiC) and Governance-in-Practice (GiP) incorporating social network perspective and practice theory. The theoretical framework is built upon the stage of psychological contract in Miranda and Kavan’s (2005) Moment of Governance (MoG) model. I applied a portion of the framework in a single case study combining Social Network Analysis (SNA) and document analysis. The findings contrast GiP with GiC, and show how they are interrelated on the same stage of psychological contract. I hope to inspire future studies to further investigate the GiP with qualitative enquiries such as in-depth interviews, combining deeper SNA with pertinent quantitative measures.

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