Project Control, Coordination, and Performance in Complex Information Systems Outsourcing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Information systems outsourcing has not only become prevalent but also involves an increasingly wide range of activities beyond the traditional programming, testing, documentation, and localization activities to include complex business-focused project planning, process design, requirements determination, and logical and physical systems designs. Such complex IS outsourcing often requires interactions among various stakeholders across different locations and cultures and therefore is much more difficult to manage than the traditional IS outsourcing. Coordination and control have been viewed as especially important project management strategies for managing project activities; however, little research has focused on how they relate to each other and how they collectively affect the performance of complex IS outsourcing projects. In this study, we examine the differential performance effects of outcome and behavior controls on coordination and show that the effect of outcome control on project performance is mediated by coordination.