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

 
 

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Birth of the Global Staffing Model 
Following the Information Technology (IT) department reorganization, executives 
developed a model to guide their IT staffing decisions. The resulting Global Staffing Model 
(GSM) was a two-by-two matrix for plotting the relative number of Icarus employees with 
specific skills (i.e. Mainframe, Java, and Data Analysis) against the degree of differentiation 
those technical skills provided to a given business function (see Figure 6.1). 
Figure 6.1.
Icarus IT Global Staffing Model with Explanatory Comments 

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Differentiation
, or its opposite, non-differentiation, denoted the relative uniqueness, or assumed 
competitive advantage, a particular function provided Icarus in their field. The quadrant where 
these two data points intersected suggested an employee versus vendor staffing model. 
The two-by-two ouija board. 
The GSM was a seemingly elegant heuristic method with 
which executives could frame their assumptions about the rapidly changing retail sector. In 
retrospect, however, the model was highly subjective and open to interpretation (or 
manipulation) under the right conditions. The dimensions of the GSM were deceptively intuitive, 
albeit non-rational, as differentiation was determined more by debate than by data. 
Within the implied logic of the GSM, more differentiated capabilities warranted higher 
levels of employee staffing, while non-differentiated, or commodity, capabilities called for more 
outsourcing. The exception to staffing non-differentiated work predominately with vendors was 
the case where employee costs were lower than vendor costs. This bottom-right or “Low 
Differentiation / High Employee Skill” distinction was intended to appease the Icarus IT team in 
India. As mentioned in Chapter Five, despite being part of Icarus’s “One Team,” employees in 
the India office during the Phoenix Era often felt they were competing with their Indian vendor 
counterparts for work. Hence executives determined the model needed to reflect scenarios in 
which the India office could be the preferred staffing decision. 
Certainly in retrospect, the Global Staffing Model was more about vague impressions 
than hard science. Executives acknowledged the generally unsophisticated nature of the GSM: “I 
think having a two-by-two like that makes some sense, but I think, to some extent, ignores things 
like availability of labor and things like that. I think it’s a good framework but it’s somewhat 
simplistic” (Executive, personal communication, August 3, 2013). In practice, executives’ 
assessments of a capability’s differentiation and appropriate staffing strategy more closely 

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resembled personal interpretations of an inkblot test than objective or even rational decision 
making. The appeal of the GSM at this time was that it purportedly represented a new discovery 
of sorts in the normal science (Kuhn, 2012) of Icarus’s IT post-reorganization operations. In 
practice, the GSM became an elegant way to legitimate executives’ infocentric assumptions 
(Brown & Duguid, 2000) that managed services outsourcing would be successful at Icarus, 
despite the fact that it had not been so during the Phoenix Era: 
The [Global Staffing Model] helped people start to think differently about...just 
[assuming] all the work’s always going to be onshore and always done by Icarus team 
members. You start to have to think [in] parameters of, “Is this something that should be 
done offshore? Is this something that should be done by a vendor partner rather than an 
Icarus team member?” (Executive, personal communication, September 10, 2013) 
In creating the GSM, executives introduced the “non-differentiating” nomenclature and label to 
the Icarus habitus. The GSM brought the general topic of outsourcing into a quasi-coherent 
narrative and legitimatized discourse that allowed debate and decisions to be made about the 
relative value of different types of work. Additionally, the simplistic two-by-two framework of 
the GSM had become an incredibly powerful cultural artifact and represented objectified cultural 
capital (Bourdieu, 1983/1986) available only to executives. Most employees had no ability to 
influence—or for most of its gestation even be aware of—the GSM. However, in the hands of 
executives, it was core to what would become the SSP initiative and ultimately used to legitimize 
the Supply Chain software development function as more appropriate to outsource over other 
capabilities. 
The GSM had become institutionalized in the general IT strategy, however, it had several 
inherent weaknesses that led to a number of the challenges SSP would later encounter. First, the 

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relatively simple nature of the model made it susceptible for executives to work the GSM in their 
favor. At different times, all executives argued that their teams’ work was differentiating and 
thus not suitable for more outsourcing. Although not recognized as such at the time, the GSM 
was a dangerous manifestation of the collaboration element of the Icarus habitus. On the surface, 
executives could appear to be aligned with one another—they moved in unison when they each 
had their fingers on the ouija board’s planchette. Yet like a medium influencing the reading 
during a séance, executives could also impose their individual influence on the planchette to 
sway the outcome. 
Additionally, the GSM limited the assessment of work to the binary pair of differentiated 
versus non-differentiated categorizations. Executives did discuss importance or complexity of 
work as a consideration for or against outsourcing, but inevitably, these variables remained 
secondary to the subjective level of differentiation the function provided. As an outsourcing 
decision-making tool, the GSM ignored the high potential for problems stemming from the 
darker elements or shadow side of the Icarus habitus.