Information Systems Outsourcing: Enduring Themes, Emergent Patterns and Future Directions
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BOOK REVIEW
Information Systems Outsourcing: Enduring Themes, Emergent Patterns and Future Directions R Hirschheim, A Heinzl and J Dibbern Published by Springer, Berlin, Germany, 2002, 537 pp, ISBN 3-540-43109-9
Reviewed by: Gury Fitzerald Department of Information, System Computing, Brunel University, UK
and
European Journal of Information Systems (2003) 12, 75–76. doi:10.1057/palgrave. ejis.3000444
This book is a set of readings on information systems (IS) outsourcing resulting from a conference held in Bayreuth, Germany, in 2001. The organisers of that conference have put together papers from the event plus some others to produce a substantial resource of contemporary research in the field. Altogether there are 23 papers organised under five section headings entitled: Determinants of the Outsourcing Decision, Arranging and Managing IS Outsourcing Relationships, Experiences and Outcome of IS Outsourcing, Integration, Transaction and Recruitment Platforms, and Application Service Provision (ASP). The first three sections, according to the editors, essentially address issues related to the outsourcing life cycle, from the clients’ perspective, that is, from the initiation of the outsourcing project (decision) through its life to the termination of the contract. The final two sections address two specific IT-enabled challenges to the basic (and more traditional) outsourcing life cycle, that is, integration, web services and ASPs. This categorisation is interesting and itself shows the development of the topic of outsourcing, as a few years ago only the life cycle section might have been present. I think the authors have made a brave attempt at this categorisation, but there are more issues and challenges than just those that are IT enabled. This book is substantial, running to over 530 pages, and provides a very useful collection of papers that together cover much, although by no means all, of the academic research in the area. There are omissions, for example, off-shore outsourcing and perhaps the implications for the residual IS/IT department after outsourcing, but most topics are covered in some form. The papers are generally up to date and well written, and although some of them have been published elsewhere it seems that many of them are either new or new versions of existing papers that the authors have provided for the conference. Some, inevitably, are more interesting than others, but they are almost all worthy of inclusion in the collection. Each individual paper cannot be reviewed here, but I will highlight a couple that I found of particular interest. The first is by Hirschheim and Lacity, which reports on a study that addresses information systems insourcing, defined here as the selection of the internal IS department over external bidders after a formal outsourcing initiative. The findings suggest that insourcing can be as cost-effective as outsourcing, but that the perceptions of stakeholders and senior managers concerning success are difficult
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Book Review
to manage in this scenario. A second
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