Risk, anxiety, and the production of comfort/trust in the context of globalized modes of working: the case of an Ireland-India IS offshoring relationship

2008 ◽  
pp. 177-215
Author(s):  
Séamas Kelly ◽  
Camilla Noonan
Keyword(s):  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eliza Chilimoniuk-Przezdziecka ◽  
Andzelika Kuznar
Keyword(s):  

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Artur Strasser ◽  
Markus Westner ◽  
Susanne Strahringer

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the main tasks, necessary skills, and the implementation of the offshore coordinator’s role to facilitate knowledge transfer in information systems (IS) offshoring. Design/methodology/approach This empirical exploratory study uses the classical Delphi method that includes one qualitative and two quantitative rounds to collect data on IS experts’ perceptions to seek a consensus among them. Findings The participants agreed, with strong consensus, for a set of 16 tasks and 15 skills. The tasks focused primarily on relationship management and facilitating knowledge transfer on different levels. The set of skills consists of approximately 25 per cent “hard” skills, e.g. professional language skills and project management skills, and approximately 75 per cent “soft” skills, e.g. interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to deal with conflict. Two factors mainly influence implementing the offshore coordinator role: project size and the number of projects to be supported simultaneously. Practical implications The findings provide indications of how to define and fulfill this crucial role in practice to facilitate the knowledge transfer process in a positive way. Originality/value Similarities in previous research findings are aggregated to examine the intermediate role in detail from a consolidated perspective. This results in the first comprehensive set of critical tasks and skills assigned to the competency dimensions of the universal competency framework, demonstrating which and how many competency dimensions are critical.


Author(s):  
Peter Haried

This study of international information systems (IS) offshoring highlights the idea that project success or failure is often in the eye of the beholder and that proper attention needs to be provided to both client and vendor perspectives. This research contributes by identifying noteworthy IS offshoring challenges faced by client and vendor stakeholders. This research synthesizes key findings from eight dyadic case studies consisting of 56 interviews in total from both client and vendor firms detailing their offshore experiences. The case investigations lead to the discovery of nine unique challenges encountered by client and vendor stakeholders. The challenges include a wide assortment of economic, personal responsibilities/expectations, and organizational offshore project management issues. The reported challenges can suitably guide client and vendor project managers in managing international IS offshore projects as well guide academic researchers to better understand techniques for managing offshore IS projects.


IS Offshoring ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 139-295
Author(s):  
Markus K. Westner
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Ann Phoenix ◽  
Uma Vennam ◽  
Catherine Walker ◽  
Janet Boddy

This chapter talks about how children are often responsibilised in environmental policy and media discourses in both India and the UK. Abstract evocations of future generations materialise in many areas of climate change policy, based on the ethical argument that, as those imagined to outlive current generations of adults, children have the most to gain from activities and policies seeking to sustain the environments of which they are a part. Yet the centring of children in discourses of climate change impact and response is not without practical and ethical problems. Positioning children as ‘undercover agents of change’ for the environmental movement is as much an abrogation of responsibility for what are essentially the damaging environmental practices of adults, as is offshoring environmental responsibility to the next generation of stewards of the earth.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. King
Keyword(s):  

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Avison ◽  
Peter Banks

The offshoring of information systems (IS) work has seen phenomenal growth in the past 5 or more years. This has resulted in IS professionals, interacting with workers from vastly different cultural backgrounds, in order to deliver IS project and support services. This cultural ‘barrier’ has been highlighted in the IS literature as a key challenge for offshoring; however, the attention given to research in the field has in the main been restricted to surveys or interviews, often reliant on reductionist national culture models. Within the fields of linguistics and anthropology, the ethnographic research technique of conversation analysis (CA) has been successfully applied to cross-cultural communications. However, there have been no concerted research efforts to apply CA to IS research in general and to IS offshoring in particular. Our research aims to address that gap by analysing naturally occurring recordings of telephone conferences between offshore vendor staff in India and UK/US employees of a major pharmaceutical company. The research has identified and analysed two important phenomena observed within these communications. Firstly, evidence of asymmetries of participation across cultural divides has been documented, and analysed for underlying causes, such as different attitudes to hierarchy and a lack of shared understanding of expected responses. Secondly, differences in the rhetorical organisation of conversation by participants have also been observed and clearly documented within transcribed specimens of these conversations. These phenomena led to seven findings that are aimed to stimulate further research. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this paper demonstrates how the methodological approach of CA can be applied to IS offshoring research, producing key insights into culturally loaded conversations with clear applications for practice. We hope that this evidence of the potential of CA in IS research will inspire IS researchers to use the approach in other domains as well as in further work in offshoring situations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mashiho Mihalache ◽  
Oli R. Mihalache

AbstractThis study develops a capability perspective of offshoring. While previous research shows that experience affects future offshoring decisions, we still lack an understanding of what offshoring management capability is and how organizations develop it. Using data on five Dutch IT service providers, we find that offshoring management capability is multidimensional as it comprises four dimensions: coordination competency, relationship development, relationship design, and organizational identification. Furthermore, we uncover the process through which organizations can actively develop an offshoring management capability. We find that there are four elements in this learning loop: an offshoring growth mentality, adaptive monitoring of offshoring performance, offshoring reflexivity, and mechanisms for storing and disseminating offshoring best practice. Therefore, our capability perspective of offshoring provides a comprehensive conceptualization of offshoring management capability as a multidimensional construct and uncovers the process through which organizations develop it.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document