The impact of ICT Sourcing on ICT organization, competences and Continuous Innovation capabilities

This paper aims at providing a description of how different ICT Sourcing strategies can impact on organizational characteristics of the ICT function, on ICT competences management and enterprise dynamic capabilities. ICT Sourcing choices have different objectives and approaches: some relevant ICT competences are maintained in house, others can be more or less externalized to specialized suppliers. But ICT Sourcing can be a strategic lever to guarantee effectiveness and, at the same time, to increase enterprise dynamic capabilities, through the ability to combine exploitation and exploration capabilities. This balance can be obtained in an extended enterprise perspective thanks to the collaboration with a network of specialised and integrated suppliers of ICT services and technologies. This specific topic have not received sufficient attention, in literature and practice, in the past years. Authors think that it’s important to understand how innovation capabilities can be increased through suppliers networks and what are limits that obstacle a effective process of continuous innovation through ICT, and ICT suppliers’ competences. To do that it’s relevant to identify ICT sourcing choices organizational impacts and influences on competences management. This study is based on an empirical research involving 40 case studies, 10 international suppliers and 2 of the main associations of CIOs in Italy.