Outsourcing as a strategyof IT-organizations : A study of limitations and opportunities that may exists within the field of service, decision-making and collaboration for IT-organizations in Sweden.

Abstract: The authors of this study have both studied at the U.S.B.E. (Umeå School of Business and Economics) for four years. Both of them have had a private interest in IT-organizations business as well as their development possibilities. We know that there exist organizations, which provide services for outsourcing of IT-activities and these are, according to us, simple to use. The purpose with this study is to identify possible limitations and opportunities with outsourcing of specific IT-activities. We want to be able to understand what drives IT- organizations to use outsourcing or not. To be able to do so, we have created a theoretical framework with four different themes containing strategy, service, decision-making and collaboration. This framework has been our line of argument throughout this research. We have a positivistic approach with an objective view, which have influenced this study. This led us to choose a deductive approach to where we started from creating a theoretical framework that concerns our research area. Our theories laid the foundation of the creation of a survey, which was randomly distributed, to 1200 IT-organizations within Sweden. Out of these 1200 organizations we received 133 answers. This data have served as the primary data for study and have been analyzed by us as well with the help of the statistical computer program SPSS. What we have found was that IT-organizations that were using outsourcing today, do it to gain a competitive advantage in being able to focus on their core competence. The organizations had different core competencies but they all had one thing in common, which was that they focused a lot on providing their customers with a high service level. However, they felt a loss in their service capability when outsourcing. This was something they believed to be a drawback. Organizations that did not use outsourcing today saw there was a security risk with outsourcing of sensitive materials to external subcontractors located outside Sweden. Not many of the respondents’ felt that there was a risk for them losing their jobs as a result of outsourcing. Despite this fact, there were more respondents’ that did not use outsourcing today, which felt a bigger threat compared to those organizations that did. The theoretical contribution of the thesis was a combined model of strategy, service, decision-making and collaboration that can help IT-organizations when thinking of whether they should outsource, or not. We believed that the practical contribution was helping the IT-organizations understanding the importance of knowing what their core competence was to be able to gain a competitive advantage, something our respondents’ did not seem to be aware of.