A RISKS-DRIVEN APPROACH TO OUTSOURCING AND REVERSIBILITY IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

摘要

Failures of IS outsourcing projects have been discussed for several years and many studies concerning outsourcing risk factors have been conducted. However, little work has been done in the area of relating risk factors to the reversibility process, i.e., switching the operations from external vendors back to in-house. There is evidence of sufficient scale to warrant further attention to the reversibility process due to the increased failure of outsourcing projects. One of the main goals of this paper is to provide a risks-driven framework that can be used as a roadmap during outsourcing/reversibility projects. The risks-driven approach to outsourcing and reversibility means that the management decision making process during the outsourcing of the IS should be based on the risk factors that may lead to reversibility. This paper also aims to identify the critical risk factors affecting each of stage of the outsourcing process.