The goal of this paper is to determine holistic archetypes of information technology (IT) outsourcing strategy. It does this through an overarching theoretical framework that integrates three ...dominant theories of interorganizational relations in the IT outsourcing literature, namely transaction cost economics, resource dependency, and social exchange theories. A contingency fit theoretical framing is married to a configurational approach to explicate the intricate relationships that spring up between a focal firm and its outsourcing vendors when they are working toward specific strategic objectives under varying contingencies. In line with this theoretical objective, we used qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), a set-theoretic configuration method that can handle the interdependent complexity among multiple elements of IT outsourcing. The technique was applied to a sample of 235 companies that have outsourced some or all of their IT functions. Findings at the project level of analysis empirically reveal two sets of configurations of strategic IT outsourcing elements, one set of configurations resulting in high economic benefit and the other set leading to high strategic benefit. Next, we compare similarities and differences among multiple, equifinal configurations and infer archetypes of IT outsourcing strategy internally congruent in terms of the strategic objectives as well as matching specific contextual contingencies. Our holistic archetypes take the form of theoretical propositions integrating the previous fragmented and inconsistent knowledge in IT outsourcing resulting from the causal ambiguity and complexity inherent in IT outsourcing projects as well as from divergent theories in the literature. Furthermore, by defining specific contingency boundaries, our archetypes provide managers with context-specific guidelines for strategic decisions regarding their relationships with outsourcing vendors, helping different sized firms to effectively succeed in IT outsourcing, contingent on the IT type being outsourced. Finally, we discuss new insights and implications of this study for complementing and extending the extant theories in IT outsourcing.
Global mindset is an emerging concept, influenced by globalization, that can support companies’ growth in international settings and help develop a more effective, skilled workforce that can be open ...and adaptable. This book presents an analysis of current global mindset knowledge and explores how national culture and international business behaviors affect global mindset development in business process outsourcing organizations in both managerial and non-managerial groups. The authors outline how processes of skill development and their final impact differ within multinational enterprises among managers and non-managers and present the implications on how to apply it in various seniority, talent groups. The theoretical and practical research discusses and emphasizes the need to involve employees in international relationship building, developing international know-how, and focusing on the methods of communication and management in business, because they stimulate the development of global mindset among managers and non-managers contributing to further business success. This book will find an audience with researchers and astute students within international business, cross-cultural management, and business process outsourcing in particular. It will also be a valuable resource for those researching and operating in global teams.
Edge intelligence is an emerging concept referring to processes in which data are collected and analyzed and insights are delivered close to where the data are captured in a network using a selection ...of advanced intelligent technologies. As a promising solution to solve the problems of insufficient computing capacity and transmission latency, the edge intelligence-empowered Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is being widely investigated in both academia and industry. However, data sharing security in edge intelligent IoV is a challenge that should be solved with priority. Although attribute-based encryption (ABE) is capable of addressing this challenge, many time-consuming modular exponential operations and bilinear pair operations as well as serial computing cause ABE to have a slow decryption speed. Consequently, it cannot address the response time requirement of edge intelligent IoV. Given this problem, an ABE model with parallel outsourced decryption for edge intelligent IoV, called ABEM-POD, is proposed. It includes a generic parallel outsourced decryption method for ABE based on Spark and MapReduce. This method is applicable to all ABE schemes with a tree access structure and can be applied to edge intelligent IoV. Any ABE scheme based on the proposed model not only supports parallel outsourced decryption but also has the same security as the original scheme. In this paper, ABEM-POD has been applied to three representative ABE schemes, and the experiments show that the proposed ABEM-POD is efficient and easy to use. This approach can significantly improve the speed of outsourced decryption to address the response time requirement for edge intelligent IoV.
We analyze how research and development (R&D) outsourcing influences product innovation. We propose a separation between learning from R&D outsourcing, whereby the firm improves its ability to ...innovate by using outsourced R&D directly in new products, from learning by R&D outsourcing, whereby the firm indirectly uses outsourced R&D by integrating it with internal R&D to create new products. Building on the knowledge-based view, we argue that learning from R&D outsourcing is likely to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with product innovation, because the initial benefits of using outsourced component R&D knowledge to innovate products is eventually outweighed by the hollowing out of the firm's ability to innovate. In contrast, we propose that learning by R&D outsourcing is likely to have a U-shaped relationship with product innovation, because the initial challenges of integrating internal and external R&D are eventually overcome, resulting in more innovations. Finally, we distinguish between domestic and foreign R&D outsourcing and propose a liability of foreignness in R&D outsourcing as it has a lower impact on new products than domestic R&D outsourcing. The empirical analysis shows that outsourced R&D has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the number of new products, while the interaction between outsourced R&D and internal R&D has a U-shaped relationship with the number of new products. It also shows that domestic outsourced R&D has a higher positive impact on the number of new products than foreign outsourced R&D.
•Introduce two new concepts on R&D outsourcing: learning from R&D outsourcing (direct effect) and learning by R&D outsourcing (indirect effect).•Propose an inverse U-shaped relationship between learning from R&D outsourcing and number of new products.•Propose a U-shaped relationship between learning by R&D outsourcing and number of new products.•Separate R&D outsourcing by location: domestic and foreign.•Introduce the liability of foreignness in R&D outsourcing concept, explaining why foreign R&D outsourcing has a lower positive effect than domestic R&D outsourcing on number of new products.
The notion of verifiable database (VDB) enables a resource-constrained client to securely outsource a very large database to an untrusted server so that it could later retrieve a database record and ...update a record by assigning a new value. Also, any attempt by the server to tamper with the data will be detected by the client. When the database undergoes frequent while small modifications, the client must re-compute and update the encrypted version (ciphertext) on the server at all times. For very large data, it is extremely expensive for the resources-constrained client to perform both operations from scratch. In this paper, we formalize the notion of verifiable database with incremental updates (Inc-VDB). Besides, we propose a general Inc-VDB framework by incorporating the primitive of vector commitment and the encrypt-then-incremental MAC mode of encryption. We also present a concrete Inc-VDB scheme based on the computational Diffie-Hellman (CDH) assumption. Furthermore, we prove that our construction can achieve the desired security properties.
Flow shop scheduling (FSS) problem constitutes a major part of production planning in every manufacturing organization. It aims at determining the optimal sequence of processing jobs on available ...machines within a given customer order. In this article, a novel biobjective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed for FSS with an outsourcing option and just-in-time delivery in order to simultaneously minimize the total cost of the production system and total energy consumption. Each job is considered to be either scheduled in-house or to be outsourced to one of the possible subcontractors. To efficiently solve the problem, a hybrid technique is proposed based on an interactive fuzzy solution technique and a self-adaptive artificial fish swarm algorithm (SAAFSA). The proposed model is treated as a single objective MILP using a multiobjective fuzzy mathematical programming technique based on the ϵ-constraint, and SAAFSA is then applied to provide Pareto optimal solutions. The obtained results demonstrate the usefulness of the suggested methodology and high efficiency of the algorithm in comparison with CPLEX solver in different problem instances. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is implemented on the main parameters to study the behavior of the objectives according to the real-world conditions.
•We develop a conceptual framework of bilateral outsourcing capabilities for successful IT outsourcing.•This study develops four propositions that prescribe multiple alternative ways to configure IT ...outsourcing capabilities for IT outsourcing success.•This study makes contributions to the IT outsourcing literature by developing new theoretical insights on the complex nature of outsourcing capabilities.•Our conceptual framework and a matching configurational approach with fsQCA can guide IS researchers for investigating similar kinds of phenomena in IS.•Our prescriptive propositions help practitioners to configure their own capabilities as well as their partners’ capabilities to effectively achieve IT outsourcing success.
Despite the extensive proliferation of Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO), firms often obtain unsatisfactory outsourcing outcomes due to the lack of appropriate outsourcing capabilities of a client or their vendor. ITO clients strive to enhance outsourcing performance by establishing their own outsourcing capabilities as well as contracting with capable vendors to meet their strategic needs. Thus, for the success of an ITO project, it is imperative to find an effective combination of complementary outsourcing capabilities on both sides. However, knowledge of how to identify and develop a set of appropriate outsourcing capabilities of both client and vendor has yet to be developed. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap by elaborating on the configurational mechanisms of outsourcing capabilities from a bilateral perspective, which explicate how multiple types of client and vendor outsourcing capabilities combine into configurations simultaneously to produce high ITO performance. First, based on the ITO literature, we develop a conceptual framework that identifies three key types of outsourcing capabilities. Then, with the matched dataset collected from a client and their vendor, we conduct a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which is a set-theoretic configurational method to investigate the systemic and holistic interdependencies among key outsourcing capabilities that produce high outsourcing performance. On the basis of the conceptual framework and empirical findings, we present four viable propositions to build configurations of client and vendor ITO capabilities that can achieve ITO success with theoretical and practical implications.
Private set computation over multi-owner databases is an important problem with many applications — the most well studied of which is private set intersection (PSI). This article proposes Prism , a ...secret-sharing based approach to compute private set operations (i.e., intersection and union, as well as aggregates such as count, sum, average, maximum, minimum, and median) over outsourced databases belonging to multiple owners. Prism enables data owners to pre-load the data onto non-colluding servers and exploits the additive and multiplicative properties of secret-shares to compute the above-listed operations. Prism takes (at most) two rounds of communication between non-colluding servers (storing the secret-shares) and the querier for executing the above-mentioned operations, resulting in a very efficient implementation. Prism also supports result verification techniques for each operation to detect malicious adversaries. Experimental results show that Prism scales both in terms of the number of data owners and database sizes, to which prior approaches do not scale.
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