Custos de Troca em Tecnologia da Informa??o: a Proposi??o de um Modelo Taxon?mico Integrado a partir da Literatura

摘要

The aim of this paper is to propose an integrated taxonomic model for the switching costs in Information Technology (IT). These costs play a decisive role in the organizations’ process of technology change, and they may limit or even prevent their occurrence, thus reducing the business’s flexibility to adjust to new environmental conditions. Due to the imprisonment they can impose to the organization, it is important to study the switching costs and the way to assess them in order to reduce their impact on the decision-making process involving the adoption of new technologies. The constructs composing the comprehensive model were obtained through thorough literature analysis in the fields of strategy, economics, marketing, information systems, and psychology. Definitions found in the several studies published in these areas were analyzed from the levels of solution, supplier, and management processes involved in the switching of technology, including a temporal perspective. The costs were classified as: selection costs, activation costs, building costs, formal costs, psychological costs, opportunity costs, and costs involved in going back to the previous solution. Since the model’s ambitions are only descriptive of the switching costs, and considering it was based in other studies that, on their turn, are supported in the practice of the business market and in the human behavior in decision-making processes, the model does not need an empirical validation in order to be readily used. Nonetheless, future studies may focus on identifying what costs are predominant in what situations and the intensity with which decision-makers observe each kind of switching cost. This will make the model both explanatory and descriptive.