IT Backsourcing: Insights and Implications From a Global Survey With IT Practitioners

Abstract

With the growing importance of IT as competitive advantage, companies aim to increase their digital transformation activities. Consequently, companies are also revisiting their existing IT sourcing arrangements. In the article at hand, the authors explore the concept of IT backsourcing by presenting the results from a quantitative online survey with global IT practitioners. The authors confirm that backsourcing is frequently applied in practice, with key reasons being dissatisfaction with service or relationship quality and higher than expected costs. Further, the authors identify IT services with an increased likelihood of being backsourced, e.g., application development or data center, and discuss the effect of a CIO change on the backsourcing decision. In addition, the authors show that there are differences in the perceptions on the antecedents and the results of backsourcing decisions between management and operational level. The authors conclude with practical implications for IT managers based on their findings.