Synthesis: Outsourcing of Information Services: Where Are We?

In this paper, I share some insights obtained from the papers from the fifth International Conference on Outsourcing of Information Services (ICOIS), while drawing upon the broader literature on outsourcing. I examine the current status, changes over time, and potential future directions in the area of outsourcing. As discussed in the paper, the outsourcing of information services (OIS) seems to offer greater potential benefits, with new industries being rooted on outsourcing and significant societal impacts. However, risks associated with OIS have increased as well, making it imperative that firms consider both aspects and not outsource IT when it increases risk and lowers returns. OIS has also become more diverse and more complex, with the broadening of actors involved from one client and one or a few vendors to a large number of individual and organizational external agents, potentially including some central and some peripheral actors as well as crowds, small cloud-based firms, robots, and marginalized individuals. As expected, the governance of outsourcing arrangements has undergone major shifts, from contracted and collaborative arrangements to arms-length and digitally-mediated structures. The research on outsourcing parallels this trend, with greater diversity in both theoretical foundations and research methods, and seems to permeate research in other areas such as business value of IT and design science. Perhaps even more drastic changes lie ahead in OIS, amidst emerging ITs, such as “big data,” blockchains, social media, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.