The Effect of Cultural Differences on Trust and Control: A Cross-Cultural Study on Information Technology Outsourcing Relationships

将信息技术（IT）外包给外部供应商可以降低交付成本，同时获得更高的交付质量。尽管有这些巨大的前景，许多信息技术外包（ITO）业务仍然失败，这通常是由于所涉及的客户和供应商组织之间的文化引起的问题。因此，我们的研究项目将重点评估客户和供应商组织之间的文化差异对ITO客户-供应商关系质量和ITO成功的影响，通过回答以下一般研究问题：客户和供应商之间的文化差异如何影响ITO客户-供应商关系质量？特别是，该项目建立在一个以社会交换理论（SET）和交易成本理论（TCT）为理论视角的预定义概念模型的基础上，旨在评估宏观、中观和微观层面（例如，国家文化、组织文化、团队文化）的文化差异与ITO客户-供应商关系中信任和控制机制的使用之间的关系。基于我们已经开展的前提工作（文献综述，对ITO客户-供应商关系影响因素的初步实证分析，概念模型定义），研究项目的实证部分将与几个行业合作伙伴联合进行，包括使用混合方法研究设计对不同的国际ITO合作进行评估。我们研究的预期结果将显示文化差异在不同背景下对ITO客户-供应商关系质量的影响，在国家、组织和团队文化方面，这是迄今为止我们对ITO客户-供应商关系的知识差距。

The outsourcing of information technology (IT) to external vendors promises lower delivery cost while attaining higher delivery quality. Despite these huge prospects, many information technology outsourcing (ITO) engagements still fail, often due to culture-induced issues between the involved client and vendor organizations. Our research project will therefore focus on evaluating the effect of cultural differences between client and vendor organizations on ITO client-vendor relationship quality and ITO success by answering the following general research question: How do cultural differences between client and vendor influence the ITO client-vendor relationship quality? In particular, building upon a pre-defined conceptual model grounded on Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Transaction Cost Theory (TCT) as the theoretical lenses, the project aims at evaluating the relationship between cultural differences on a macro-, meso- and micro-level (e.g., national culture, organizational culture, team culture) and the usage of trust and control mechanisms in ITO client-vendor relationships. Building upon our already conducted prerequisite work (literature review, initial empirical analysis on factors influencing the ITO client-vendor relationship, conceptual model definition), the empirical part of the research project will be conducted jointly with several industry partners and includes the evaluation of different international ITO engagements using a mixed-method research design. The expected result of our study will show the influence of cultural differences on ITO client-vendor relationship quality across diverse contexts in terms of national, organizational as well as team culture which is so far a gap in our knowledge on ITO client-vendor relationships.