Portfolios of control: researching discourses in IT outsourcing

This research aims to enhance our understanding of IT outsourcing governance and the influence of its formal and relational mechanisms in executing IT outsourcing. More specifically, our study will demonstrate the role of wider “outsourcing discourses” in disciplining the behavior of the outsourcing partners but also how they permit the creation of avenues to escape discipline and responsibility. The study will introduce a Foucauldian view in the examination of how these “outsourcing discourses” are enacted and will encompass the perspectives both from the client and the supplier organizations.