 |
Jain, R.P., Simon, J.C., and Poston, R. 2011. “Mitigating Vendor Silence in Offshore
Outsourcing: An Empirical Investigation,” Journal of Management Information Systems (27:4), pp. 261-298.
The tendency to remain silent about project-related issues can contribute to suboptimal
project performance or project failure. Prior research in offshore outsourcing suggests
that client managers should play a critical role to induce offshore vendors' employees
not only to report project problems in a timely fashion but also to brainstorm and
contribute ideas to a project. Also, the extant research on cross-cultural teams has
emphasized the importance of cultural adaptation in the smooth functioning of these
teams, but the role of cultural adaptation in silence mitigation has been largely
underdeveloped in the literature. In this research, we bring these concepts of vendor
silence and cultural adaptation in cross-cultural teams together and develop a process
framework that illustrates how vendor silence may be mitigated in offshore outsourcing
through various silence mitigation mechanisms. We then develop three propositions
for organizational action toward mitigating vendor silence, which highlight the mediating
role of cultural adaptation.
|