A paradigmatic and methodological review of research in outsourcing

Due to the growing academic and practitioner interest in the field of outsourcing, there is a need to do a comprehensive assessment and synthesis of research activities to date. This article addresses this need and examines the academic literature on information systems outsourcing and business process outsourcing using a paradigmatic and methodological lens. The objective of this article is fourfold. Firstly, it examines the status of outsourcing research from 1995 to 2005 in eight leading academic journals, to compare the current research trends with past research directions in terms of methodologies applied. Secondly, it analyzes the research paradigms adopted in these research papers using the Operations Research Paradigm framework. Thirdly, it compares and contrasts the outsourcing research work published in three leading European journals with the work published in three leading American journals. Finally, it uncovers the implications of this study and the directions for future research.