This paper reports the results of a study of three successive IT outsourcing contracts at British Petroleum (BP). We offer an operational definition of IT outsourcing risk and use it to assess the risk exposure associated with each contract. We then examine how the management at BP dealt with...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between the stringency of environmental regulation and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the Quebec manufacturing sector. This allows us to investigate more fully the Porter hypothesis in three directions. First, the dynamic...

This document takes stock from several studies on outsourcing risk. A definition of risk is offered and illustration from many case studies is used to show how risk can be managed. Results show that an active risk management approach can reduce risk exposure subtantially while enabling the...

Information Systems (IS) researchers often rely on organizational economics models to describe and explain various IS management issues. While those models are found to be useful, measures are yet to be proposed to assess the dimensions of IS transactions. In this paper, we present the results...

We investigate the impact of occupational safety and health (OSH) and environmental regulation on the rate of growth of total factor productivity (TFP) in the Quebec manufacturing sector during the 1985-88 period. Our results show that environmental regulation and OSH protective reassignments (a...

In this paper, we develop and estimate an explanatory model of Human Resources Outsourcing. Six HR activities are analyzed: Payroll, Benefits, Recruiting, Training, Labor Relations, and Human Resources Information Systems. The determinants of outsourcing are drawn from two fields: the field of...

We use agency theory to shed light on a complex, multi-year outsourcing contract between an important public organization and three major information services outsourcers. The contractual arrangement shows that innovative contracts can be drawn that reduce the scope of supplier opportunism. Nous...

Outsourcing decisions, and contractual arrangements of the type required by an IT outsourcing deal, entail risks. This is not to say that outsourcing is bad in itself. It only means that, as in other risky business ventures such as new product development, capital investments, and IS projects,...

This paper evaluates the dynamic aspects of the UML in the context of inter-organizational workflows. Two evaluation methodologies are used. The first one is ontological and is based on the BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) models. The second validation is based on prototyping and consists in the...

For many, Quebec government intervention in hydroelecticity began in 1963 with the nationalization of the industry. In fact, this was the last stage of a progression in policy whose beginnings can be traced back to the Quebec Electricity Commission in 1935. Was this commission effective or was...