Modeling coordination in organizations and markets
Management Science
What is coordination theory and how can it help design cooperative work systems?
CSCW '90 Proceedings of the 1990 ACM conference on Computer-supported cooperative work
The impact of information systems on organizations and markets
Communications of the ACM
The interdisciplinary study of coordination
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Electronic markets and electronic hierarchies
Communications of the ACM
Designing Complex Organizations
Designing Complex Organizations
Competition and Outsourcing with Scale Economies
Management Science
Contracts in Offshore Software Development: An Empirical Analysis
Management Science
Information systems outsourcing: a survey and analysis of the literature
ACM SIGMIS Database
IT Outsourcing Success: A Psychological Contract Perspective
Information Systems Research
Multisourcing: moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility
Multisourcing: moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility
Journal of Management Information Systems - Special section: Strategic and competitive information systems
Call-Routing Schemes for Call-Center Outsourcing
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
Outsourcing via Service Competition
Management Science
Just Right Outsourcing: Understanding and Managing Risk
Journal of Management Information Systems
The Choice of Sourcing Mechanisms for Business Processes
Information Systems Research
Outsourcing strategy in two-stage call centers
Computers and Operations Research
Multitask Agency, Modular Architecture, and Task Disaggregation in SaaS
Journal of Management Information Systems
Client strategies in vendor transition: A threat balancing perspective
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Multisourcing, the practice of stitching together best-of-breed IT services from multiple, geographically dispersed service providers, represents the leading edge of modern organizational forms. While major strides have been achieved in the last decade in the information systems (IS) and strategic management literature in improving our understanding of outsourcing, the focus has been on a dyadic relationship between a client and a vendor. We demonstrate that a straightforward extrapolation of such a dyadic relationship falls short of addressing the nuanced incentive-effort-output linkages that arise when multiple vendors, who are competitors, have to cooperate and coordinate to achieve the client's business objectives. We suggest that when multiple vendors have to work together to deliver end-to-end services to a client, the choice of formal incentives and relational governance mechanisms depends on the degree of interdependence between the various tasks as well as the observability and verifiability of output. With respect to cooperation, we find that a vendor must not only put effort in a “primary” task it is responsible for but also cooperate through “helping” effort in enabling other vendors perform their primary tasks. In the context of coordination, we find that task redesign for modularity, OLAs, and governance structures such as the guardian vendor model represent important avenues for further research. Based on the analysis of actual multisourcing contract details over the last decade, interviews with leading practitioners, and a review of the single-sourcing literature, we lay a foundation for normative theories of multisourcing and present a research agenda in this domain.