DEVELOPING AN ONTOLOGICAL VIEW OF OUTSOURCING

Abstract

An understanding of information technology outsourcing risks, risk categories and their relationships, has been developed over the years from multiple research and theoretical perspectives. These perspectives are not well integrated, however, and do little to develop a common and shared understanding of sourcing risks for organisations. This means that IT sourcing decisions are not well supported by a coherent and well-understood body of knowledge. To start to address the shortcoming, we have conducted three workshops with skilled practitioners and academics to supplement our current understanding of sourcing risk, risk categories and their relationships. From these workshops we have developed an integrated ontological view of sourcing risk which defines the relationships between sixteen risk categories and over hundred and fifty risks, and maps the relationships between them. To facilitate this integrated ontological view we have applied the commonly using OWL and the Protégé-tool to our workshop data.