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Contracts, Control and “Presentation” in IT Outsourcing

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The Practice of Outsourcing
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Abstract

Adoption by some of the largest international corporations has seen outsourcing become a key component of the information technology management agenda. Critical to this agenda is the formulation of comprehensive contracts. For this, legal experts and/or advisors can be consulted, but enforcement depends very much on client and vendor account managers. In this chapter a theoretical analysis of the contract contrasted with empirical data from client and vendor post-contract management practice revealed that the contract has a number of purposes beyond its sole legal nature, outlining a number of control dimensions both parties aim to enforce. Here we present findings from 13 organizations on the role of the outsourcing contract in ensuring control over the client’s outsourcing destiny (for this subject see also Chapters 3 and 11).

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© 2009 Thomas Kern and Leslie Willcocks

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Kern, T., Willcocks, L. (2009). Contracts, Control and “Presentation” in IT Outsourcing. In: The Practice of Outsourcing. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230240841_10

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