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

Employees who received a heads up on the announcement. 
In the days leading up to 
the first town-hall announcement, Richard, Donald, and the Working Team prepared a script for 
the town hall and distributed a list of speaking points and responses to possible questions to all 
IT executives. Executives were sworn to secrecy, and were asked to share speaking points to 
their respective teams only after the town hall meeting. This plan also included specific timing 
for the email invites to be sent to employees and how additional information regarding SSP 
would be disseminated to the full IT executive team. The information included a list of potential 
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) with scripted responses. This type of formal plan was the 
standard operating procedure for executives to control information for large announcements. 
These FAQs are also where executives first outlined their commitments that all impacted 
employees would be placed into new positions. 
IT executives received explicit instructions on what to communicate and what not to 
communicate with employees in advance of the town hall announcement. However, Richard and 
Donald overlooked the routine ritual for some managers to build their social capital with 
employees through well-placed leaks of privileged information. As was common, some 
executives chose to break with the secrecy code. Most notably, some of the senior managers 
actually on the Working Team informed some employees in advance during individual back 
stage rituals. These leaders deliberately chose to informally share information and details directly 

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with impacted employees. One of the IT managers, who reported to a senior manager on the 
Working Team (Rachel as a pseudonym), shared their story, which is reflective of how some 
impacted individuals received advance information: 
Okay, so I’m sure you know, but I’ll just frame up what my perspective of what 
happened. I had been told in advance that we would have something like this, some kind 
of general communication to the team, to all the impacted teams, whoever we determined 
as being those . . . replaced with this new partnership. But overall, I have to tell you what 
has really helped for me . . . is that I had talked about some of this . . . [with Rachel] a 
little bit in advance . . . [it] really helped me to try and talk with my team members later 
that day. So I had a little bit more information than just the FAQ that was handed out, but 
not a lot, because nobody had a lot. It was more [that] I was comfortable with saying the 
words, and I was comfortable with the concept . . . and so then that helped in talking with 
the three team members I have. (Employee, personal communication, December 12, 
2012) 
This particular manager felt better equipped to support their employees who first learned of SSP 
during the town hall. Rachel chose to give her manager temporary membership backstage. This 
personal and informal setting that Rachel created appeared to be more engaging for the manager. 
The backstage ritual had a sense of exclusivity and privileged access to the recipient. The 
information, and its cultural capital, appeared to be more valuable when shared in this manner, 
suggesting that while the Icarus habitus emphasized consensus and transparency, how one 
learned key updates was perhaps more valued than what they actually learned. 
Another employee recalled the informal and personal way their senior manager from the 
Working Team explained SSP and the impacts to employees. As with the previous example, the 

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conversation was informal. As Goffman (1959) suggested, actors may choose to adopt different 
“costumes” or “settings” when performing their roles. In this case, one employee recalled 
learning about SSP when their senior manager (pseudonym of Philip) took them for a walk in 
lieu of their standard status meetings in the office: 
I reported to [Philip] and [Philip] had kind of alluded to things that [Philip] was doing 
about alternative staffing models, and this is probably like a year ago . . . that [Icarus 
was] thinking differently about staffing, and I always knew that there was more work 
coming down the pipe than we could support. I had the sense that something was 
happening, but I did not have a sense of how big we were actually thinking about it. 
When I actually realized that, [Philip] had pulled me aside and we went for a walk, which 
was a little bit unusual. [Philip] just told me, “Here’s what we’re thinking about.” It 
actually took about ten to fifteen minutes for me to really understand the magnitude of 
how we were thinking about doing this because as [Philip] was explaining I was still 
thinking about the project model similar to what we do with [large IT projects] where we 
take a large program and hand it off to a vendor versus having them take over all of the 
IT [software] delivery functions. (Employee, personal communication, November 7, 
2012) 
Insomuch as executives had a defined ritual for formally communicating announcements to 
employees, so did the senior managers for leaking SSP information to employees. Extending 
Goffman’s (1959) metaphor, although the actors on the Working Team were provided (and 
helped author) a script of what to say, when to say it, and whom to say it to, they chose to exhibit 
backstage behaviors that built social capital with their employees. These senior managers 

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preferred something of a more democratic and informal ritual, and thus granted some employees 
temporary backstage membership to the SSP dramaturgy. 
The Working Team members were not the only individuals leaking information to 
employees in advance of the town hall. Other IT executives, not part of the SSP inner circle, but 
certainly in the know about it, were sharing information in similar informal rituals with impacted 
employees. One employee recalled meeting with an executive (pseudonym of Josh): 
There was a few mentions of it [SSP]. I knew that it was being considered for the [Supply 
Chain] domain because there’s a regular technical leadership roundtable with [Josh] on a 
quarterly basis. I think it must’ve been last spring that [Josh] mentioned that . . . there 
were some options out there for the roadmap for [Supply Chain] development. That was 
one of the options . . . outsourcing. That was a hint of it although when [Josh] mentioned 
it [Josh] says that, “I got a lot of challenges for that idea.” It sort of sounded like it was 
not going to go anywhere . . . (Employee, personal conversation, October 19, 2012) 
Another employee mentioned a similar conversation with Josh: 
Actually, [Josh] had hinted that one of the options was to outsource us, probably about a 
month before that or two months before that, so my team kind of knew that. We didn’t 
really know what it meant. The first time I heard the term [SSP] was at [Richard’s town 
hall] kick off. (Employee, personal conversation, November 30, 2012) 
Unlike Working Team members who took the time to talk to employees individually, other 
executives foreshadowed SSP in small-group meetings with managers. The setting may have 
been different, but these performances were similar backstage rituals—an individual with insider 
information to SSP chose to share information outside of the formal structure Richard, Donald, 
and the Working Team had established. Employees who received the early and informal 

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communication were generally appreciative of the advance notice and appeared to acclimate 
more quickly than others to the changes SSP would bring. Although the motivations of Working 
Team members and executives who shared this information were not evident from the 
interviews, the IT taxonomy and power dynamics at Icarus provide some analytical insights. 
Taxonomically, the senior managers were in a type of limbo, somewhere between the 
executives and impacted employees. This meant they also operated in a constant state of flux 
between their own temporary backstage membership to the CIO Staff Meeting and the front 
stage position they generally held outside of that setting. The Working Team had access to 
significant amounts of sensitive information, as they were working directly with Donald, 
Richard, and other SSP executives. Yet some also chose to deviate from the very communication 
plans they built for SSP and discussed SSP with their employees ahead of the town hall. In doing 
so, they gained the appreciation of their employees. 
From Lincoln’s perspective, senior managers’ selective deviance was a type of resistance 
ritual (1989). They were selective with how they deviated from the communication plan, and 
they did so discreetly rather than risk publicly challenging Richard and Donald. Violating the 
Icarus taboo of going around your boss would have had consequences, the least of which would 
have been a loss of trust among the executives that could have led to a quasi-excommunication 
or revocation of their temporary backstage membership, thus cutting off access to future 
privileged information. That said, being forbidden to discuss SSP prior to the official 
proclamation of it was not part of the Icarus habitus. 
As noted, temporary backstage access was a significant form of cultural capital—it was 
also part of the Icarus habitus as routinely practiced in the ubiquity of “statusing.” Employees 
and executives alike thrived on having access to insider information on each other’s peccadillos 

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as much as they wanted to know about new department initiatives. Despite Richard’s perceived 
success with the highly scripted town hall and FAQs, following these rules actually violated the 
Icarus habitus. Employees were much more receptive to backstage performances. For the 
employees who did not have this access, the messages at the town hall meeting would come as a 
complete surprise.