Papers by Kiron Ravindran
Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2012
ABSTRACT Information technology outsourcing is often accompanied by the risky practice of transfe... more ABSTRACT Information technology outsourcing is often accompanied by the risky practice of transferring clients’ production assets to vendors. It is unclear why outsourcing similar services is, at times, accompanied by asset transfer while at other times is not. Theoretical explanations in the Resource Based View and Property Rights Theory have tended to separately focus on either the nature of the outsourced service or the ownership of the asset. I argue that independently they offer only partial explanation of the common phenomena and consequently propose an integrative framework. Based on two well documented case studies, I offer an illustration to the merits of the framework.
Information Systems Research, 2015
This paper presents new evidence on the role of embeddedness in predicting contract duration in t... more This paper presents new evidence on the role of embeddedness in predicting contract duration in the context of Information Technology (IT) Outsourcing. Contract duration is a strategic decision that aligns interests of clients and vendors, providing the benefits of business continuity to clients and incentives to undertake relationship specific investments for vendors. Considering the salience of this phenomenon, there has been limited empirical scrutiny into how contract duration is awarded. We posit that clients and vendors obtain two benefits from being embedded in an inter-organizational network. First, the learning and experience accumulated from being embedded in client-vendor network could mitigate the challenges in managing longer-term contracts. Second, the network serves as a reputation system that can stratify vendors according to their trustworthiness and reliability, which is important in longer-term arrangements. In particular, we attempt to make a substantive contribution in theorizing about embeddedness at four distinct levels: structural embeddedness at the node level, relational embeddedness at the dyad level, contractual embeddedness at the level of a neighborhood of contracts and finally, positional embeddedness at the level of the entire network. We analyze a dataset of 22039 outsourcing contracts implemented between 1989 and 2008. We find that contract duration is indeed associated with structural and positional embeddedness of participant firms, with the relational embeddedness of the buyer-seller dyad and with the duration of other contracts to which it is connected through common firms. Given the nature of our data, identification using traditional OLS based approaches is difficult given the unobserved errors being clustered along two non-nested dimensions and the autocorrelation in a firm's decision (here the contract) with those of contracts in its reference group. We employ a multi-way cluster robust estimation and a network auto-regressive estimation to address these issues. Implications for literature and practice are discussed.
Abstract Prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) has identified the ideal gove... more Abstract Prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) has identified the ideal governance mode to be either Formal'or 'Relational'governance modes. However, both streams of literature rely on stringent assumptions about the cost of breaching contractual obligations and the mechanism of enforcement. We propose a third alternative for governance based on a firm's reputation among an inter-organizational network of trading partners.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Abstract: Similar Information Technology (IT) services are regularly outsourced under very differ... more Abstract: Similar Information Technology (IT) services are regularly outsourced under very different contracting terms. Contract duration, a key element of contract design, often varies significantly between contracts allocated to different vendors even when the services included are similar. We identify that contract duration is associated with firms' social capital after ruling out alternate causal explanations based on industry, firm, and service level characteristics. A firm's position in the network could assuage concerns about ...
Most prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing has characterized the dominant governan... more Most prior research on Information Technology Outsourcing has characterized the dominant governance modes as either 'Formal' or 'Relational,' which rely on stringent assumptions of perfect foresight or about the extent to which one party can punish unilateral deviations by the other. We propose a third alternative in addition to dyadic measures of inter-firm reputation. The reputation of an actor can be associated with how the firm is positioned in a network, which in turn influences how information about a particular actor flows within the network. Such aspects of structural embeddedness suggest a role in predicting not only characteristics of inter-firm exchange, but also for the continuation and expansion of the relationship. The social network capital offers a measure to mitigate the uncertainty associated with both the nature of service outsourced as well as the uncertainty pertaining to the nature of the service provider. The network of trading partners enables a community enforcement of contracting terms by providing safeguards that may not be offered by traditional measures of formal or relational governance.
Information Systems Research, Dec 1, 2011
We would like to acknowledge the many reviewers who devoted their time, energy, and expertise to ... more We would like to acknowledge the many reviewers who devoted their time, energy, and expertise to Information Systems Research. The service these dedicated volunteers perform plays a key role in ensuring the quality of the journal. The following individuals served as reviewers of manuscripts reviewed in 2011.
Abstract Prior research on inter-firm contracting has identified the ideal governance mode to be ... more Abstract Prior research on inter-firm contracting has identified the ideal governance mode to be either Formal‟ or „Relational‟ governance modes. However, both streams of literature rely on stringent assumptions about the cost of breaching contractual obligations and the mechanism of enforcement. We propose an embeddedness-based governance logic by examining an inter-organizational network of exchange partners.
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Papers by Kiron Ravindran