Business Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2011
Volume
58
Issue
4
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management
First Page
717
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2010.2090733
Last Page
729
Abstract
“Multisourcing” has emerged as an important strategy for global information technology (IT) service outsourcing in today's turbulent business environment. The existing literature on IT service provides only limited insights into this phenomenon. However, in the manufacturing domain, a similar concept, supply base management, has been extensively studied. In this paper, we integrate related research in IT service and manufacturing to explore how firms can successfully pursue global multisourcing strategy in IT service. Specifically, we first conceptualize a firm's multisourcing supply base along the dimensions of breadth and depth and theorize about the impact of these two dimensions on outsourcing outcomes. Second, based on this framework, we analyze four configurations of multisourcing supply base. Finally, we conduct case studies of two global financial services firms to illustrate the configurations and identify patterns of evolution of global multisourcing strategy in customized information systems development.
Notes
This is the author accepted version of an article that appears in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management and can be found at https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2010.2090733