Labor Relations Commons^™

The Application Development Outsourcing Contract Decision: The Effect Of Service Quality, Relationship Quality, Satisfaction, And Switching Costs On Continuation And Discontinuation Decisions, G. Dwayne Whitten

Doctoral Dissertations

Although the popularity of IT outsourcing has grown over the last two decades, approximately one third of outsourcing contracts are discontinued. This discontinuation of contracts has resulted in renegotiations with the original outsourcing vendor, switching to another vendor, and backsourcing, or the return of previously outsourced functions in-house.

IT outsourcing is expected to grow to a $160 billion industry in the United States alone by 2005. Given the conclusion by some researchers that so many outsourcing arrangements end in vendor switches or backsourcing, it is apparent that a large amount of money is being needlessly wasted. By better understanding the …