This study examines the onshore/offshore decision in external software development, comparing the prediction of three theories of international trade. (1) Applying Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, offshoring to low labor cost countries should apply mainly with large projects. (2)...

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify a typology of procurement contracts in the context of software development projects that allows firms to align design flexibility with design uncertainty at the project level. The theoretical lenses of contract theory and software engineering...

We follow the recent literature on <italic>ex post</italic> adaptations in procurement and argue that highly volatile specifications result in multiple variations of fixed price (FP) and time and materials (T&M) contracts. Specifically, placing a cap on specification change in FP contracts prevents specification...

We study contract design choices affecting the complexity of outsourcing contracts, defined by the number and stringency of contract provisions employed, using 262 software development outsourcing contracts from a large European bank. Unlike extant research, we study the complexity of specific...

This paper examines multiple contract design choices in the context of transaction and relational attributes and consequent ex-ante and ex-post transaction costs. It focuses on two understudied themes in the IT outsourcing literature. First, while the literature is predominantly concerned with...