Structure of service level agreements (SLA) in IT outsourcing: The construct and its measurement

Jahyun Goo ()
Additional contact information
Jahyun Goo: Florida Atlantic University

Information Systems Frontiers, 2010, vol. 12, issue 2, No 7, 185-205

Abstract: Abstract The increased reliance of companies on IT outsourcing has turned management attention to a set of skills of managing relationships with service providers. While some recent studies have shown that the contracting ability to effectively manage relational exchanges can improve various dimensions of organizational performance, there has been relatively little analysis of how firms strategically use contracts to successfully manage their interfirm relationships. As an extension of past studies emphasizing the importance of the contract and service level agreements (SLA), the study develop an inclusive and conceptually sound framework for structuring SLA in IT outsourcing arrangements drawing upon control theory. Along with a careful description of measurement development as well as rigorous statistical validations, it contributed to instrument development for a set of 11 first-order SLA contractual factors and their relationships with three second-order substantive factors. The results of the study are framed as a tool for benchmarking SLA structuring efforts as well as a foundation for the future study of managing IT outsourcing relationships. The study suggests empirically testing of (1) the complementarity or substitutability between formal contract and relational governance, (2) institution based trust as an initial trust building mechanism, and (3) IT outsourcing success from a contractual perspective as potential areas of future research using the results of the study.

Keywords: IT outsourcing relationships; Control theory; Service level agreements (SLA); Measurement development; Second-order construct (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-008-9067-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infosf:v:12:y:2010:i:2:d:10.1007_s10796-008-9067-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10796

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-008-9067-6

Access Statistics for this article

Information Systems Frontiers is currently edited by Ram Ramesh and Raghav Rao

More articles in Information Systems Frontiers from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().