Firm strategic profile and IT outsourcing

IT outsourcing research has often been at the transaction level, focusing on the role of the characteristics of the IT activities as the antecedents of outsourcing decisions. The present study extends past research efforts examining the relationships between organizational level variables—in particular the business strategy—and the decision to outsource. Results show that prospectors and analyzers are more aggressive in their use of outsourcing for IT operations. However, no differences between the behaviour of the different strategic groups were found for maintenance activities, suggesting that these activities are too far from the core of the organization to be influenced by strategic profile.

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