Title: The impact of boundary spanning capability, cultural differences on success of offshore information system outsourcing - from the vendors' perspective

Authors: Bo Yang; Yuan Yuan; Mingzhu Liu

Addresses: Department of MIS, School of Information, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, China ' Department of MIS, School of Information, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, China ' Department of MIS, School of Information, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, China

Abstract: Effective communication between clients and vendors in offshore IS outsourcing requires spanning various boundaries such as cultural differences, language barriers and domain knowledge gaps to ensure efficacious information transmission through clients and vendors. How to overcome these boundaries is an important question. This paper takes culture differences as a mediator to study the impact of vendors' boundary spanning capability on success of offshore IS outsourcing. The research model is empirically tested on 102 offshore IS outsourcing projects from 20 vendors in China. The results suggest that vendors' boundary spanning capability significantly improves outsourcing success. Moreover, we find that culture differences partial mediate the relationship between boundary spanning capability and outsourcing success.

Keywords: offshore information systems; IS outsourcing; boundary spanning capability; outsourcing success; cultural differences; culture; language barriers; domain knowledge gaps; China.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2014.065086

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2014 Vol.14 No.1/2, pp.4 - 24

Received: 30 Nov 2013
Accepted: 06 May 2014
Published online: 29 Oct 2014 *

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