Knowledge sharing management in offshore software development outsourcing relationships from vendors' perspective: A systematic literature review protocol

Abstract

Offshore software development outsourcing (OSDO) is a well known business strategy adopted by many organizations in developed countries by outsourcing their software development work to low-wages countries. Developing software at offshore locations offers many benefits including access to skilled human resource and high quality software development at low cost. However outsourcing is not a risk free business for both vendor and client organizations. Vendor organizations need to address a number of factors for successful outcomes of the outsourcing relationships. Likewise knowledge sharing management (KSM) plays an important role in OSDO relationships. This research seeks to explore KSM in the context of OSDO relationships from vendors' perspective. The objective is to identify the factors that can play a positive or negative role in KSM by reviewing the literature in a systematic way. Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is based on a structured protocol, and is therefore, different from ordinary literature review. SLR provides in-depth, more thorough and comparatively unbiased results than ordinary literature review. We have developed a SLR protocol for the KSM, and are in the process of implementing the protocol. The expected outcomes of this review will be the identification of critical success factors and critical barriers to be addressed by vendor organizations for enhancing KSM in the context of OSDO relationships.