Research of Boundary Spanning Capability in Offshore Outsourcing Projects

1. Research of Boundary Spanning Capability in Offshore Outsourcing Projects Lu Bao School of Information Renmin Universiry of China Multi-case Study Based on Vendors’ Perspective

2. Agenda Introduction Literature Review Research Process Cases Analysis Conclusion & Limitation

3. Introduction • Along with the promotion of globalization, more and more services have been distributed worldwide and provided by service providers from the entire world (Mithas and Whitaker, 2007). Offshore IS outsourcing projects, a kind of important global business activities, are playing an increasingly important role and getting much more attention (Carmel and Tjia, 2005；Dibbern et al., 2004；Willcocks and Lacity, 2006) • Related researches show that almost 65% of outsourcing projects are failed and unsatisfied (Moore, 2004) • Among all of the problems, coordination and communication problems between clients and vendors caused by culture differences, language barriers and domain knowledge gaps are important reasons for the failure (Dibbern et al., 2004；Sharma et al., 2008)

4. Introduction • Boundary spanning capability: a kind of capability that establishes and implements cross-organizational seamless information flow (Vilvovsky, 2009) Boundary Spanning Capability Boundary Spanners Boundary Objects Boundary Spanning Processes

5. Literature Review

6. Literature Review • Boundary objects can be divided into four types (Carlile, 2002): • repositories (e.g. database) • standardized forms and methods (e.g. engineering change table) • objects or models (e.g. computer simulation) • maps of boundaries (e.g. flow chart)

7. Literature Review • Initial capital of boundary spanners by Levina and Vaast (2005): • economic thinking, culture understanding, sociability, representativeness. • Boundary spanning process : • can be considered to be standard for boundary spanners and boundary objects to span boundaries (Levina, 2003). • Multi-case study method

8. Research Process • Success rate of outsourcing projects in company A and company C is higher than that of company B.

9. Research Process • Interviewed staffs in different positions: • Three steps for data collection • Literatures and secondary data resources • Determine the research objects and interview objects • Follow-up interviews with relevant staffs

10. Cases Analysis • Problems • Culture differences • Domain knowledge gaps • Different difficulties in different levels • Middle managers face more challenging problems • Communication barriers are the biggest problem for primary testers

11. Cases Analysis • Solutions for problems

12. Cases Analysis • Relationship with success rate

13. Conclusion & Limitation • Conclusions • There is little impact of company’s scale on boundary spanning capability. Small company can have higher boundary spanning capability. • There is positive impact of boundary spanning capability on success rate of offshore outsourcing projects. • There is positive impact of boundary spanners on boundary objects and boundary spanning processes • Limitations • The three companies are all in Beijing • All the interviewed staffs are from test related teams • This study only focuses on European and American outsourcing projects.

14. About Summer Camp Thank Professor Marko Nieminen, Professor Eija Karsten and Porfessor Andrea Molinari! Their lectures, materials ad discussions help me a lot about case study. Thank all the professors!

15. Thank you！