In today's global IT outsourcing relationships, individual employees need to operate effectively in culturally diverse environments. Such intercultural interactions can be especially challenging for members of IT service suppliers based in offshore locations. Through an in-depth qualitative case study of one of the largest China-based IT service firms with diverse clients from Japan, the United States, and China, this research elaborates the cultural sensemaking activities of the supplier's individual employees. Specifically, drawing on the dynamic constructivist view of culture, this study develops the construct of Òcultural framesÓ in the context of global IT outsourcing to characterize the knowledge structures guiding an individual's collaboration with diverse clients. A portfolio of cultural frames emerges and evolves through the individual's cultural sensemaking activities, which consist of the iterative enactment, alignment, and retention of cultural frames. In the cultural sensemaking process, the activity of frame bridging, in particular, creates significant value for the outsourcing relationship, and is especially salient among bicultural employees.
With China emerging as a new frontier of global IT outsourcing, many Chinese IT service suppliers are actively expanding in three major markets: Asia, especially Japan, the West, especially the United States, and the Chinese domestic market. Compared to multinational suppliers and established Indian suppliers, Chinese IT service firms are at a relatively early, but rapidly growing stage, which offers a unique opportunity to explore an understudied topic in the information systems literature: internationalization strategies of IT service suppliers from emerging economies. Through a three-part qualitative case study of 13 China-based IT service firms, including almost all of the Chinese suppliers recognized globally, this study elaborates the internationalization behavior and decision rationale of these suppliers. The findings show that these major Chinese suppliers include both firms that incrementally internationalize and firms that are "born global." For both types of firms, the entry and growth in different markets is a highly dynamic activity combining a strategically planned, resource-seeking process and a flexible, opportunistic bricolage process based on existing operation capabilities and client relationships. The suppliers dynamically oscillate between these processes to exploit and create opportunities while expanding in multiple markets