Understanding resistance in IT outsourcing: A service provider perspective

Previous research identified that service providers are struggling with the transition phase. The aim of this research is to create a deeper understanding of the effects of service provider resistance to change on the duration of the transition phase. This paper presents the results from an explorative empirical study, based on five service providers in the field of IT outsourcing. Our findings are twofold. First, we found that all the providers under study indeed experienced the transition phase as a struggle and resistance to change was perceived as fierce. Second, resistance to change was found in each organisational subunit and, as such, the process of change can be described as incremental. Since the topic of resistance to change from the perspective of service providers has hardly been researched, our research aims to contribute by partly filling this gap.