Influencing Factors of Knowledge Transfer in IT Outsourcing

Information technology outsourcing (ITO) has become one of a critical success factor for any viable strategy in an increasingly global economy. However, it is reported in numerous studies that organizations are faced with risk due to the technology and market shift when exercising ITO. This is even so prevailing when the outsourcing consumer (OSC) are left with little or no knowledge on the product developed, implemented and maintained by the outsourcing service provider (OSP). Thus, from related works, this paper presented knowledge transfer processes (KTP) within the context of ITO environments composed of two related component: knowledge delivering and knowledge receiving or acquiring. Seventeen attributes are proposed based upon the predetermined key factors. The key factors are Knowledge provider (vendor), Knowledge to be transfer, Knowledge Receiver (client) and the Knowledge Infrastructure. The proposed framework yielded seventeen hypotheses representing seventeen attributes. In order to validate the framework, data are collected using survey and later statistically analyzed. The refined framework incorporating best practices yielded four key factors with two influencing attributes specified for the first factor, three influencing attribute for the second factor, two attributes for the third factor and six attributes for the fourth factor. This framework can be seen as an integration of several important elements involved in KTP, which need to be considered as an important aspect in facilitating KTP in an ITO environment. This paper is intended to help practitioners and researchers to visualize the process of knowledge transfer in IT outsourcing projects.