Software Complexity and Organization of Firms’ Offshoring Activities

Abstract

How does software complexity shape software providers' offshoring tasks, and how <br />do such firms organize their offshoring activity? These questions are important, since the <br />global software development market is growing rapidly, offering new opportunities for <br />software managers and entrepreneurs to distribute their activities geographically. Based on <br />a multi-site case study of 12 software firms, we study connections between software <br />complexity and the offshoring strategies selected. Our findings suggest that software firms <br />select a variety of organizational structures for their offshoring activity, and that the selection <br />is shaped by the complexity of the software in question.<p><br /></p>