A field study of the software design process for large systems
Communications of the ACM
Inside a software design team: knowledge acquisition, sharing, and integration
Communications of the ACM
Coordination in software development
Communications of the ACM
The role of knowledge in software development
Communications of the ACM
A dynamic coordination policy for software system construction
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Coordinating Expertise in Software Development Teams
Management Science
The Influence of Business Managers' IT Competence on Championing IT
Information Systems Research
IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results
IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results
A Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm--The Problem-Solving Perspective
Organization Science
Multisourcing: moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility
Multisourcing: moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility
Journal of Management Information Systems
Journal of Management Information Systems - Special section: Information technology and its organizational impact
Software processes and project performance
Journal of Management Information Systems - Special section: Information technology and its organizational impact
Information Systems Research
Expertise Integration and Creativity in Information Systems Development
Journal of Management Information Systems
Governance-Knowledge Fit in Systems Development Projects
Information Systems Research
The Connected Company
Capabilities, Transaction Costs, and Firm Boundaries
Organization Science
Novelty-Knowledge Alignment: A Theory of Design Convergence in Systems Development
Journal of Management Information Systems
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Specialized firms engaged in service offshoring contracts often face a tension between specializing in their own domain and maintaining knowledge in their partners' domains. When knowledge is “peripheral” to a firm's own specialty e.g., an information technology IT service contractor's knowledge of a client's business domain or a client's technical knowledge of a contractor's domain, firms face a paradoxical dilemma of how much of such knowledge to invest in. This paper explores when it is important for clients and contractors to have in-house knowledge beyond their own, to be effective in IT service offshoring. We explore IT service engagements where it is more important for a the client to have deeper technical knowledge and b the contractor to have deeper business domain knowledge. We define the pattern of client--contractor knowledge overlaps as interfirm knowledge partitioning. The central thesis is that ex ante alignment between interfirm knowledge partitioning and service engagement newness enhances interfirm knowledge integration in offshoring engagements. To effectively organize service offshoring, solutions to interfirm knowledge integration problems in the presence of interfirm specialization are required; this is the underlying idea of this paper. The proposed model is tested using data on IT service offshoring engagements by 209 U.S. firms to foreign IT service firms. The findings offer novel theoretical insights into optimal interfirm knowledge partitioning in services contracting. Implications for service science theory and practice are also discussed.