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

Recommendations for information technology executives.
As discussed in Chapter 
Three, the primary generalizability concern for this study was “internal generalizability,” or “the 
generalizability of a conclusion within the setting or group studied” (Maxwell, 2005, p. 115). 
Nevertheless, the findings of this research include “yellow trending red” warnings that 
executives at other firms may want to consider prior to their own ITO endeavors, particularly 
managed services agreements such as Icarus’s Strategic Staffing Program. 

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The anomalies of the capacity problem’s disappearance and Supply Chain’s 
“differentiating” importance to Icarus suggest the benefits for IT executives to continuously 
reexamine both why they are outsourcing and what they are outsourcing. Icarus executives 
ultimately had no real way to deal with these anomalies as they occurred. Executives created SSP 
based on their infocentric conclusion of increased IT work, and chose to outsource Supply Chain 
software development based on the ouija board nature of the Global Staffing Model. Neither of 
these fundamental why and what decisions were openly debated or revisited by executives until 
Brenda’s attempted backstage intervention years later. Instead, executives commiserated over 
these matters in private—a sure sign they were on the road to Abilene. This research highlighted 
the consequences for Icarus when this debate was avoided or relegated to backstage exchanges. 
Executives considering ITO with managed services agreements should consider reevaluating and 
discerning why they are outsourcing and what they are outsourcing. 
A second recommendation for leaders of other ITO programs concerns transitioning 
technical and cultural knowledge from employee engineers to contractors. Although they were 
provided the available technical documentation, ComTech contractors were generally excluded 
from the collaborative problem solving, storytelling, and improvisation that Brown and Duguid 
(2000) suggest is needed to contextualize information and develop “know how” versus mere 
“know of.” Even had Icarus executives’ decisions about why and what they were outsourcing not 
been faulty, it is surmisable that the ComTech contractors would have nevertheless struggled 
with knowledge transfer given the accelerated pace of this activity. Executives considering ITO 
with managed services agreements are cautioned to not under-estimate potential cultural barriers 
and the extensive time and interactions that may be required by contractors with their existing 
engineers. Furthermore, and unlike SSP, executives should consider creating appropriate 

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incentives for tenured engineers to transition technical and cultural knowledge they have 
developed over years of hands on experience.