IT Offshore Outsourcing: Contingency and Strategies

This article explores the IT offshore outsourcing phenomena and discusses the predictors of firm's adoption level of offshoring practice.The authors draw on transaction cost economics, culture theories, integrated social contract theory, and institutional theory to examine the offshore outsourcing impetuses and investigate the related research issues.The multitheoretic lens highlights the interactions among firm, supplier, and business environment and suggests the important role of contingency in predicting the firm's strategic response to offshoring which is manifested by the level of offshoring engagement.This paper contributes to the theory development of IT offshore outsourcing.