Rise and Fall of an Information Technology Outsourcing Program: a qualitative Analysis of a Troubled Corporate Initiative

partnership.’”. . . [Then] he goes [sic], “Okay, fine, it’s ‘outsourced,’ but I’m not 
supposed to say that.” (Employee, personal communication, January 8, 2013) 
Taxonomically, front line managers and their employees had (or lacked) relatively the same 
amount of organizational power, which is what may have enabled a less structured or open 
backstage (Goffman, 1959) conversation. When there was a larger gap between taxonomy levels, 
the communication ritual would increase in formality and structure and be more of a front stage 
performance. Interestingly, the verbiage executives used to qualify the level of outsourcing on 
SSP left more room for interpretation in these same structured communications: 
From what they can tell us so far, they [executives] come back to us and said, “Well, it’s 
not a ‘true outsourcing’ situation but it’s definitely much more outsourcing than just 
hiring some consultants and contractors. There’s a lot of details to work out as to what 
the capabilities even of a third party provider are in this space.” The other thing, too, was 
even though they call it a “Managed Service Provider,” in my mind, it’s still an 

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“outsourcing” situation. Call it what you may. There’s always connotations surrounding 
that. I keep just calling it “outsourcing” and no one objects to it. The leadership team, so 
to speak, they [say], “It’s not full outsourcing,” but for the most part it’s definitely a type 
of outsourcing. I think that just has more of a negative connotation over the IT industry 
over the last twenty years. They [executives] prefer not to use that term, I think. 
(Employee, personal communication, October 17, 2012) 
By employing less certainty in the way they defined SSP as “outsourcing,” “managed services,” 
or just “aligning with the Global Staffing Model,” executives hoped to leave themselves 
flexibility to adjust their messaging as SSP progressed. Icarus leaders continually reframed or 
relabeled problems through their political discourse in order to present their “solutions” as 
legitimate and rational. This can also be tied back to the brand and flawless execution elements 
of the Icarus habitus, and there was some history of this throughout the early phases of SSP. 
When the initial research started in 2011, executives referred to the effort as the “Expand the 
Resource Pool” project. This was followed by naming it the “Strategic Outsourcing” initiative 
and later changed again to the “Strategic Staffing Program.” However, given the reactions of the 
employees interviewed, executives failed dexterity in this regard left employees more suspicious 
than pacified.