Motives for Multisourcing in the IT Sector

Multisourcing is a relatively new phenomenon that began a decade ago as companies began developing strategies to split large information technology (IT) contracts into smaller ones. This provided the opportunity to choose best-of-breed suppliers, who were supposed to collaborate to provide a seamless service to the company. Firms began to multisource when the large IT contracts they had did not bring assumed benefits. At the same time, the business environment was forcing them to be flexible, efficient and able to quickly implement new technologies. The trend to multisource has been growing, so it is worth investigating why companies prefer this form of cooperation. This topic was not a subject of research previously.

The goal of the article is to identify, structure and analyze the motives for choosing multisourcing as a model for cooperation between frms. It verifies motives based on IT multisourcing literature. Case study is described, which, following Eisenhardt, is the correct method for early stages of studies on a topic such as multisourcing, which is still in its nascent stages.

The identified motives for multisourcing are uncertainty bounding, access to resources, preparedness, effectiveness, learning, and external motives. In any case, companies need to be mature and ready for it, so the motive of preparedness is the most crucial one to realize benefits of this form of cooperation. Knowledge of motives for multisourcing is important for companies that take decisions on service supplier strategy. The article helps to increase understanding of the multisourcing phenomenon and offers a fertile basis for future research.