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The Impact of Educational Background on Working Relationships in Offshoring Projects

  • Conference paper
New Perspectives in Information Systems and Technologies, Volume 1

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 275))

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Abstract

Offshore outsourcing provides opportunities for great gains but is also characterized by numerous unsuccessful ventures. As personal relationships within the team structure have been located as source of success we ask the question whether the same educational background is an enabler for successful collaboration in offshoring. In other words: "Do engineers work better with engineers or does the educational background not matter?".

An exploratory study has been conducted based on a questionnaire with 89 offshoring professionals. Results substantiate the crucial importance of the educational background for the success of offshoring projects and as such request sufficient management attention.

It is shown that for team members with similar educational background relationship quality is of much higher importance then relationship management to successfully work together in offshoring projects.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences, Wileystr. 1, 89231, Neu-ulm, Germany

    Fabian Köpf, Heiko Gewald & Philipp Brune

Authors
  1. Fabian Köpf
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  2. Heiko Gewald
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  3. Philipp Brune
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabian Köpf .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade de Coimbra & LIACC, Rio Tinto, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  2. Instituto Superior de Estatística e Gestão de Informação, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Ana Maria Correia

  3. Department of Business Information Systems, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Felix . B Tan

  4. Empirica GmbH, Bonn, Germany

    Karl . A Stroetmann

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Köpf, F., Gewald, H., Brune, P. (2014). The Impact of Educational Background on Working Relationships in Offshoring Projects. In: Rocha, Á., Correia, A., Tan, F., Stroetmann, K. (eds) New Perspectives in Information Systems and Technologies, Volume 1. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 275. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05951-8_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05951-8_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-05950-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-05951-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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