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Software Complexity and Organization of Firms’ Offshoring Activities

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Nordic Contributions in IS Research (SCIS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 294))

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Abstract

How does software complexity shape software providers’ offshoring tasks, and how do such firms organize their offshoring activity? These questions are important, since the global software development market is growing rapidly, offering new opportunities for software managers and entrepreneurs to distribute their activities geographically. Based on a multi-site case study of 12 software firms, we study connections between software complexity and the offshoring strategies selected. Our findings suggest that software firms select a variety of organizational structures for their offshoring activity, and that the selection is shaped by the complexity of the software in question.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In line with Jarke and Lyytinen [8] we refer here to external software complexity.

  2. 2.

    Activities (i)–(ii) were related to software development for foreign customers, whereas activities (iii)–(iv) were supporting services.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Arto Ojala

  2. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    Eriikka Paavilainen-Mäntymäki

  3. Ivey Business School, London, Canada

    Ning Su

  4. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA

    Kalle Lyytinen

Authors
  1. Arto Ojala
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  2. Eriikka Paavilainen-Mäntymäki
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  3. Ning Su
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  4. Kalle Lyytinen
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Correspondence to Arto Ojala .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Østfold University College, Halden, Norway

    Susanne Stigberg

  2. Østfold University College, Halden, Norway

    Joackim Karlsen

  3. Østfold University College, Halden, Norway

    Harald Holone

  4. Østfold University College, Halden, Norway

    Cathrine Linnes

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Ojala, A., Paavilainen-Mäntymäki, E., Su, N., Lyytinen, K. (2017). Software Complexity and Organization of Firms’ Offshoring Activities. In: Stigberg, S., Karlsen, J., Holone, H., Linnes, C. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2017. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 294. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64695-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64695-4_2

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