Maintaining knowledge throughout outsourcing IT projects

Abstract

Many organizations of different sizes are increasingly outsourcing their IT functions. Despite the opportunities and the many benefits, not many companies pay enough attention to knowledge retention within IT outsourcing. IT is becoming increasingly complex, which means that companies need to share sensitive knowledge with their supplier to guaranty the success of the outsourced project, thereby taking the risk to fail to retain the latter on the one hand. Nevertheless, losing this crucial knowledge can be prevented through a strategic way of sharing and transferring knowledge to and from the supplier. On the other hand it is also important to take the opportunity to retain the knowledge that will be shared by the supplier.

This study defines the success factors that play an important role in the retention of knowledge within IT outsourcing and the main problem statement is as follows: What are the critical success factors enabling the retention of knowledge when outsourcing IT activities?