Trust Facilitating Good Software Outsourcing Relationships

Offshore outsourcing and teams working across national borders have become a fact. Management experiences difficulties when applying traditional management approaches, because of the increased complexity of global organizations and global partnerships and their dependency on people with different underlying norms, values and beliefs. Cultural sensitivity is a core issue. Trust, an issue embedded in culture, is utmost important for global organizations and global outsourcing partnerships. In this paper we investigate the phenomenon of trust by analyzing the characteristics, their interconnection and identification in the software outsourcing context. Our findings reveal the importance of trust in software outsourcing relationships and the recognition that trust is culture bound and therefore prompts for special caution and cultural awareness. The advantages gained in outsourcing relationships which could demonstrate trust between partners were improved communication, efficiency and output of Information Systems (IS) development projects, as well as mitigation of opportunistic behavior.

[1]  G. Brenkert,et al.  Trust, Morality and International Business , 1998, Business Ethics Quarterly.

[2]  A. Giddens.  The consequences of modernity , 1990 .

[3]  K. Blois.  Trust in Business to Business Relationships: An Evaluation of its Status , 1999 .

[4]  A. Zaheer,et al.  Does Trust Matter? Exploring the Effectsof Interorganizational and Interpersonaltrust on Performance , 1998 .

[5]  Elli Georgiadou,et al.  CODE for SQM: a model for cultural and organisational diversity evaluation. , 2003 .

[6]  T. Das,et al.  Trust, Control, and Risk in Strategic Alliances: An Integrated Framework , 2001 .

[7]  E. Schein.  Organizational Culture and Leadership , 1991 .

[8]  Nick Forster,et al.  Expatriates and the impact of cross-cultural training , 2000 .

[9]  F. Land.  The Management of Change: Guidelines for the Successful Implementation of Information Systems , 2018, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

[10]  R. Lewicki,et al.  Developing and Maintaining Trust in Work Relationships , 1996 .

[11]  Rajiv Sabherwal,et al.  The role of trust in outsourced IS development projects , 1999, CACM.

[12]  Robert D. Costigan,et al.  A Multi-Dimensional Study of Trust in Organizations , 1998 .

[13]  Morten Hertzum,et al.  The importance of trust in software engineers' assessment and choice of information sources , 2002, Inf. Organ..

[14]  Subhashish Samaddar,et al.  Information systems outsourcing: Replicating an existing framework in a different cultural context , 2006 .

[15]  Vegar Imsland,et al.  The role of trust in global software outsourcing relationships , 2003 .

[16]  James G. Hunt,et al.  Charisma and leadership in organizations , 1993 .

[17]  J. Nicholls,et al.  Leadership in organisations: Meta, macro and micro , 1988 .

[18]  A. Bryman.  Charisma And Leadership In Organizations , 1993 .

[19]  Debra L. Shapiro,et al.  Betrayal of Trust in Organizations , 1998 .

[20]  G. Walsham.  Making a World of Difference: IT in a Global Context , 2001 .

[21]  W. Ouchi,et al.  JAPANESE-STYLE PARTNERSHIPS -- GIVING COMPANIES A COMPETITIVE EDGE. , 1993 .

[22]  Gregory A. Bigley,et al.  Straining for Shared Meaning in Organization Science: Problems of Trust and Distrust , 1998 .

[23]  Jérôme Barthélemy,et al.  The Hard and Soft Sides of IT Outsourcing Management , 2003 .

[24]  Wendy L. Currie,et al.  Evaluating offshore IT outsourcing in India: supplier and customer , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[25]  Erran Carmel,et al.  Tactical Approaches for Alleviating Distance in Global Software Development , 2001, IEEE Softw..

[26]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  Co-operative partnership and ‘total’ IT outsourcing: From contractual obligation to strategic alliance? , 1995 .

[27]  James D. Herbsleb,et al.  Benefits of CMM-Based Software Process Improvement: Initial Results , 1994 .

[28]  Péter Fehér,et al.  Forces Affecting Offshore Software Development , 2005, EuroSPI.

[29]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust , 1998 .

[30]  Kyung Kyu Kim,et al.  Initial trust, perceived risk, and the adoption of internet banking , 2000, ICIS.

[31]  Russell L. Purvis,et al.  Trust-building mechanisms utilized in outsourced IS development projects: a case study , 2004, Inf. Manag..

[32]  Sundeep Sahay,et al.  Managing cross-cultural issues in global software outsourcing , 2004, CACM.

[33]  Shawn L. Berman,et al.  The Structure of Optimal Trust: Moral and Strategic Implications , 1999 .

[34]  K. Praveen Parboteeah,et al.  Multinational Management: A Strategic Approach , 1998 .

[35]  Blair H. Sheppard,et al.  Business on a handshake , 1992 .

[36]  R. Inglehart.  Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies , 1997 .

[37]  Norman L. Chervany,et al.  Trust and Distrust Definitions: One Bite at a Time , 2000, Trust in Cyber-societies.

[38]  C. Handy.  Trust and the virtual organization , 1999 .

[39]  David I. Cleland,et al.  Global Project Management Handbook , 1993 .

[40]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  The power of relationships , 2005 .

[41]  G. Hofstede.  Culture′s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations , 2001 .

[42]  Cynthia Hardy,et al.  When `Silence = Death', Keep Talking: Trust, Control and the Discursive Construction of Identity in the Canadian HIV/AIDS Treatment Domain , 2001 .

[43]  Kerstin V. Siakas,et al.  Software outsourcing quality achieved by global virtual collaboration , 2006, Softw. Process. Improv. Pract..