The Client and Service Provider Relationship in IT Outsourcing Project Success: The Moderating Effects of Organizational Attitudes on Knowledge Sharing and Partnership Quality

The role of organizational attitude for an effective knowledge sharing (KS) in IT outsourcing (ITO) relationships has not been adequately addressed. In this paper, the authors investigate the relationship between KS and ITO success as well as the potential moderating effect of organizational attitude on the relationship between KS and partnership quality in ITO. By leveraging structural equation modeling (SEM) on survey data from 153 ITO projects, results show that organizational attitudes significantly influence knowledge sharing and partnership quality, which in turn results in successful ITO project. Moreover, the relationship between knowledge sharing and partnership quality is more pronounced when the partner firms have positive attitudes to KS. The authors further showed that partnership quality mediates the relationship between knowledge sharing and the success of an ITO project. Finally, the results of this study indicate that positive organizational attitude improves knowledge sharing between the client and service providers (i.e., vendors) and creates stronger outsourcing partnerships.