From the editors

  • Authors:
  • Wynne W. Chin;Dorothy Leidner

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Houston;Baylor University, Waco, TX

  • Venue:
  • ACM SIGMIS Database
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

For our last issue of the year, we are pleased to present a survey review of Information Systems Outsourcing by Dibbern, Goles, Hirschheim, and Jayatilaka. It can arguably be said that the demand for better understanding of this phenomenon has only increased in importance as Indian technology-outsourcing companies such as Wipro, Tata and Infosys continue to report revenue growths of 44%, 44% and 52% respectively based in part on strong business from US companies (Wall Street Journal, B1, October 18, 2004). At the same time, the general issue of outsourcing has clearly seeped into the public consciousness in the US to the extent that it has become a standard talking point among politicians. With the over 15 years of academic research that our field has produced in this area, it seems reasonable that we take a moment to reflect and produce a scholarly review that provides both a comprehensive and integrative framework for understanding the diverse set of studies to date. We are glad that the authors took up this task in response to our earlier call to researchers to consider Data Base as an outlet for framework and review papers. Equally important is the fact that they did not treat a survey review as simply a series of article summaries. Instead, they made explicit their objectives, among them being to provide a comprehensive and coherent framework for cataloging and synthesizing the outsourcing literature, identifying the various research foci, and distinguishing themes or trends in the literature which may help to point out opportunities and suggestions for future studies. Then, to achieve their objectives, the authors took great pains to explicitly outline the a priori frameworks and process by which they selected and classified studies. We encourage other researchers who are interested in submitting reviews in other IS areas to not only contact us, but to first look at this review as an example of the quality and rigor we expect. Notwithstanding the time invested in producing the original submission, our review process for this paper went through 3 rounds with the reviewers spanning slightly over two years. Substantial revisions were made during this process. Needless to say, we don't necessarily expect other papers to take as long if changes are not as dramatic. As it is, we hope the readers agree that the final outcome is beneficial to all individuals interested in a state of the art survey of IS outsourcing.