We examine the role of sentry and guard activities in outsourced software development. Sentry activities are designed to regulate the inflow of external information to the project teams and guard activities are designed to manage the outflow of teams' information and resources to external sources. The use of sentry and guard activities has been examined in teams in other contexts such as new product development, but their role and relationship to performance in software development teams is not well understood. We hypothesize and test curvilinear relationships between these activities and knowledge integration in vendor development teams. We also examine how these effects vary under conditions of greater project uncertainty. We tested the hypotheses using data from 139 vendor development teams drawn from sixteen Indian software companies. Results highlight complex curvilinear associations among sentry and guard activities, and knowledge integration, which are further impacted by the level of uncertainty that the project team faces. We recommend that carefully calibrating sentry and guard processes will help vendor development teams enhance project outcomes. > >
This article investigates software process diversity, defined as the project condition arising out of the simultaneous use of multiple software development process frameworks within a single project. Software process diversity is conceptualized as the response of a project team to such contingencies as requirements volatility, design and technological novelty, customer involvement, and the level of organizational process compliance enforced on the project. Moreover, we conceptualize that the degree of fit (or match) between a project's software process diversity and the level of process compliance enforced on the project impacts overall project performance. This conceptualization was empirically tested by utilizing data collected from 410 large commercial software projects of a multinational firm. The results show that higher levels of requirements volatility, design and technological novelty, and customer involvement increased software process diversity within a project. However, software process diversity decreased relative to increases in the level of process compliance enforced on the project. A higher degree of fit between the process diversity and process compliance of a project, rather than the effects of those variables independently, was found to be significantly associated with a higher level of project performance, as measured in terms of project productivity and software quality. These results indicate that increasing software process diversity in response to project-level contingencies improves project performance only when there is a concomitant increase in organizational process compliance efforts. The implications of these results for research are discussed and prescriptive guidelines derived to manage the fit between process diversity and process compliance for improving software project performance.
Seizing the latest technological advances in distributed work, an increasing number of firms have set up offshore captive centers (CCs) in emerging economies to carry out sophisticated R&D work. We analyze survey data from 132 R&D CCs established by foreign multinational companies in India to understand how firms execute distributed innovative work. Specifically, we examine the performance outcomes of projects using different technology-enabled coordination strategies to manage their interdependencies across multiple locations. We find that modularization of work across locations is largely ineffective when the underlying tasks are less routinized, less analyzable, and less familiar to the CC. Coordination based on information sharing across locations is effective when the CC performs tasks that are less familiar to it. A key contribution of our work is the explication of the task contingencies under which coordination based on modularization versus information sharing yield differential performance outcomes.
An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the implementation of digital business strategies (DBS), the importance of DBS and information transparency in leadership, and the disclosure of information outside the boundaries of business.
Over the last three decades, the prevailing view of information technology strategy has been that it is a functional-level strategy that must be aligned with the firm's chosen business strategy. Even within this so-called alignment view, business strategy directed IT strategy. During the last decade, the business infrastructure has become digital with increased interconnections among products, processes, and services. Across many firms spanning different industries and sectors, digital technologies (viewed as combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies) are fundamentally transforming business strategies, business processes, firm capabilities, products and services, and key interfirm relationships in extended business networks. Accordingly, we argue that the time is right to rethink the role of IT strategy, from that of a functional-level strategy-aligned but essentially always subordinate to business strategy-to one that reflects a fusion between IT strategy and business strategy. This fusion is herein termed digital business strategy. We identify four key themes to guide our thinking on digital business strategy and help provide a framework to define the next generation of insights. The four themes are (1) the scope of digital business strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy, (3) the speed of digital business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and capture in digital business strategy. After elaborating on each of these four themes, we discuss the success metrics and potential performance implications from pursuing a digital business strategy. We also show how the papers in the special issue shed light on digital strategies and offer directions to advance insights and shape future research.
Outsourcing of information technology (IT) services has received much attention in the information systems (IS) literature. However, considerably less attention has been paid to actual contract structures used in IT outsourcing (ITO). Examining contract structures yields important insights into how the contracting parties structure the governance provisions and the factors or transaction risks that influence them. Based on insights from prior literature, from practicing legal experts, and through in-depth content analysis of actual contracts, we develop a comprehensive coding scheme to capture contract provisions across four major dimensions: monitoring, dispute resolution, property rights protection, and contingency provisions. We then develop an empirical data set describing the contract structures across these distinct dimensions, using a sample of 112 ITO contracts from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) database from 1993 to 2003. Drawing on transaction cost, agency, and relational exchange theories, we hypothesize the effects of transaction and relational characteristics on the specific contractual provisions, as well as on overall contract extensiveness. Furthermore, we examine how these associations vary under conditions of fixed price and time and materials pricing structures. The results provide good support for the main hypotheses of the study and yield interesting insights about contractual governance of ITO arrangements.
Manufacturing firms are increasingly using advanced enterprise-level information systems to coordinate and synchronize externally oriented functions such as marketing and supply chain and internally oriented activities such as manufacturing. In this paper, we present a model of manufacturing performance that simultaneously considers the effects of a firm's integrated IS capability in conjunction with interfunctional and interorganizational coordination mechanisms. Consistent with the complementarity perspective, we view this specific form of IS capability as enhancing manufacturing's coordination with marketing and supply chain functions to drive manufacturing performance. Additionally, the theoretical model presented here introduces manufacturing-IS coordination, a form of coordination not considered in past research, as a key antecedent to integrated IS capability. The research thus provides a comprehensive framework for examining manufacturing performance in contexts that have been transformed by the use of advanced information systems. The theoretical model is tested using primary data collected from manufacturing firms and matched with objective manufacturing performance data from secondary sources. Results show that a firm's integrated IS capability, as well as the complementary effects of IS capability with manufacturing, marketing, and supply chain processes, are significant predictors of manufacturing performance. These findings are robust to concerns of endogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity and alternative model specification.
Agility is vital to the innovation and competitive performance of firms in contemporary business environments. Firms are increasingly relying on information technologies, including process, knowledge, and communication technologies, to enhance their agility. The purpose of this paper is to broaden understanding about the strategic role of IT by examining the nomological network of influences through which IT impacts firm performance. By drawing upon recent thinking in the strategy, entrepreneurship, and IT management literatures, this paper uses a multitheoretic lens to argue that information technology investments and capabilities influence firm performance through three significant organizational capabilities (agility, digital options, and entrepreneurial alertness) and strategic processes (capability-building, entrepreneurial action, and coevolutionary adaptation). We also propose that these dynamic capabilities and strategic processes impact the ability of firms to launch many and varied competitive actions and that, in turn, these competitive actions are a significant antecedent of firm performance. Through our theorizing, we draw attention to a significant and reframed role of IT as a digital options generator in contemporary firms.