The Library
Innovating or doing as told? Status differences and overlapping boundaries in offshore collaboration
Tools
Levina, Natalia and Vaast, Emmanuelle (2008) Innovating or doing as told? Status differences and overlapping boundaries in offshore collaboration. MIS Quarterly, 32 (2). pp. 307-332. ISSN 0276-7783.
Research output not available from this repository.
Request-a-Copy directly from author or use local Library Get it For Me service.
Official URL: http://misq.org/innovating-or-doing-as-told-status...
Abstract
Increasingly, firms source more complex and strategic as well as harder to codify information technology projects to low-cost offshore locations. Completing such projects successfully requires close collaboration among all participants. Yet, achieving such collaboration is extremely difficult because of the complexity of the context: multiple and overlapping boundaries associated with diverse organizational and national contexts separate the participants. These boundaries also lead to a pronounced imbalance of resources among onshore and offshore contributors giving rise to status differences and inhibiting collaboration. This research adopts a practice perspective to investigate how differences in country and organizational contexts give rise to boundaries and associated status differences in offshore application development projects and how these boundaries and status differences can be renegotiated in practice to establish effective collaboration. To illustrate and refine the theory, a qualitative case study of a large financial services firm, which sourced a variety of high-end IT work to its wholly owned subsidiaries (“captive centers”) and to third party vendors in multiple global locations (in particular, to India and Russia), is presented. Using a grounded theory approach, the paper finds that differences in country contexts gave rise to a number of boundaries that inhibited collaboration effectiveness, while differences in organizational contexts were largely mediated through organizational practices that treated vendor centers and captive units similarly. It also shows that some key onshore managers were able to alleviate status differences and facilitate effective collaboration across diverse country contexts by drawing on their position and resources. Implications are drawn for the theory and practice of global software development and multiparty collaboration.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | MIS Quarterly | ||||
Publisher: | M I S Research Center | ||||
ISSN: | 0276-7783 | ||||
Official Date: | June 2008 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Volume: | 32 | ||||
Number: | 2 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 307-332 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |