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

 
 

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Looking Up and Looking Around on the Road to Abilene 
Icarus had very few fixed decision-making norms beyond socializing and rehearsing 
high-stakes presentations. The habitus rewarded executives and employees who could generally 
discern which way the cultural winds were blowing and tack or jib their sails accordingly. The 
habitus fueled executives’ dramaturgy from the staged nature of the CIO Staff Meetings, to the 
demand for the appearance of (but not actual) consensus, to the backstage rituals of rehearsal and 
attempted consensus building. The result was the CIO and top IT executives tacitly agreeing to 
take a protracted, ill-fated trip to Abilene. Furthermore, the data showed executives’ tendencies 
to reach quasi-agreement on certain decisions while “reserving the right to have an opinion as the 
work unfolds” (Executive, personal communication, August 29, 2013) also contributed to SSP’s 
delays. In essence, it was a culturally acceptable ritual for executives to revisit and attempt to 
undo previous decisions. 
Operating from within the Icarus habitus, executives considered their means of support or 
challenge to SSP as rational and critically sound given the available data and context of the 
moment. In other words, the “right” action for executives to take at any given moment was to 
“look up and look around” as Jackall (2010) suggested. Executives attempted to control the flow 
of power and information in a way that most aligned with their personal moral career desires. 
However, this study found executives were generally ineffective in their “dexterity with 
symbols.” 
How employees found out about SSP for the first time was a significant event in their 
moral careers. Employees who learned about SSP in Richard’s front stage town hall performance 
generally had a stronger and emotional reaction to the news—they described feeling “shocked” 
and “stunned” by the announcement. They also were more likely to misinterpret Richard’s 

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messages; some employees assumed the entire IT department was to be outsourced. Conversely, 
those who first heard about SSP via informal, backstage communication rituals had more 
moderate reactions to the news. The data supporting this finding suggest employees expected to 
learn privileged information in these backstage conversations. For their part, Richard, Donald, 
and other IT executives overlooked this commonplace, backstage expectation. They errantly 
attributed their communication “successes” to their front stage performance, which in fact were 
more likely to have a negative effect.