The first major challenge to
offshore development is the factor of trust. Trust is an important aspect of
interpersonal (Boon, Holmes, 1991) as well as inter-organisational relationship
(Ring, Ven, 1994). But it is difficult to develop a
relationship with unknown foreign partners that are timely and geographically
distant mainly because the companies do not have any relationship beyond the project
itself.
Moreover trust can be
difficult to establish as most projects are developed through structural
mechanisms, which include deliverables, penalty clauses and reporting arrangements
whereas in-house development relays more on trust rather than on details
structured reporting (Lander,
Purvis, McCray and Leigh, 2004).
While realising the difficulty
in establishing trust in offshore project it is still needed in order to cooperated
with foreign companies as distrust can hurt the performances whereas trust
improves the performance. As distrust leads to finger pointing
and each organisation starts focusing on how other organisations may have hurt
the project.
Issues in trust have led some
organisations to create their own software development centres in countries
like India, China, Russia and Brazil.
References:
Boon, S., and Holmes, J. The dynamics of interpersonal trust: Resolv-
ing uncertainty in the face of risk. In Cooperation and Prosocial Behav- ior,
R. Hinde, and J. Groebel, Eds. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.,
1991, pp. 190–211.
Lander, Maria
Cristina, Russell L. Purvis, Gordon E. McCray, and William Leigh.
"Trust-building mechanisms utilized in outsourced IS development projects:
a case study." Information & Management 41, no. 4
(2004): 509-528.
Ring, P.,
and Van de Ven, A. Developmental processes of cooperative interorganizational
relationships. Acad. Mgt. Rev. 19, 1 (Jan. 1994),90–118.
No comments:
Post a Comment