Information Systems Offshoring—A Literature Review and Analysis

Abstract

IS offshoring has become one of the most discussed phenomena in IS research and practice. Particularly due to its rapid evolvement, current research on IS offshoring lacks a consolidated view on existing results. The article at hand seeks to meet this need by systematically reviewing and analyzing prior academic literature on IS offshoring. Based on a review of top-ranked IS and management journals as well as IS conference proceedings, we compile an exhaustive bibliography of ninety-six publications solely focusing on IS offshoring from a (project) management perspective. To adequately address the immense diversity of these publications, a multi-perspective research framework consisting of three perspectives, namely, research focus, research approach, and reference theory, is introduced and forms the basis for our literature analysis. The analysis results confirm the appropriateness of our framework and reveal directions for future research along the framework perspectives: Most importantly, in an effort to increase the significance and the trustworthiness of their results, researchers should apply a more theory-driven approach and provide a better description of their research context. Moreover, future research needs to pay particular attention to the pre-implementation stages of an IS offshoring initiative as well as the special nature of nearshoring and captive offshoring. Across all project stages, researchers should not only concentrate on the client point of view but incorporate multiple points of view.