Model of decision-making on the use of IT outsourcing

This work is devoted to the construction of the theoretical model, which allows us to optimize the activities of the company's management when making decisions about the use of outsourcing of information technology as applied to specific IT service. Relying primarily on the theory of transaction costs, the model analyzes the impact of factors such as asset specificity (specificity of transactions), uncertainty, frequency of transactions, the number of technical and business skills required to carry out transactions on the decision-making process on the use of sourcing model for information technology. In addition, in connection with existing contradictory results obtained in the study of IT outsourcing from the point of view of the theory of transaction costs, the author proposes to use the theory of complementary assets, as a theoretical system that can explain the discrepancy between theory and practice. Using the theory of complementary assets in the model of decision-making on the use of IT outsourcing takes place in the context of the theory of core competencies. The author puts forward the assumption of non-compliance of the empirical results and theoretical assumptions of the theory of transaction costs, according to which this is due to the fact that the degree of complementarity of IT services to be considered for transfer to the execution of an external provider, and the core competencies of the organization are not analyzed. The introduction of this assumption in the model can help to explain the contradictions, since the use of the analysis of the concept of complementarity has already shown its effectiveness and efficiency in many economic studies. This paper proposes a conceptual model of IT outsourcing, as well as the generalized algorithm of decision-making on the use of IT outsourcing. This algorithm can be implemented in software in any environment that will optimize the activities of management companies.