An Empirical Study On The Relationship Of Trust,knowledge Transfer And Software Outsourcing Performance

With the rapid development of economic globalization and information technology,more and more enterprises outsource part of or the entire software development and the corresponding services.Software outsourcing has been the trend of the software industry.In recent years,with the rise of the knowledge-based service much attention has been paid on the issue of knowledge and knowledge transfer raised during the software outsourcing process.As a knowledge-intensive activity,the successful knowledge transfers between the outsourcing contractors and contractees plays a rather important role in the outsourcing performance.Previous studies have realized the significant influence of the trust on the knowledge transfer and outsourcing performance.However,the mechanism of the effects of multidimensional property of trust on the knowledge transfer and outsourcing performance has not been clearly explained.Additionally,no inspection of the mechanism has been obtained.Most of researchers treat the trust as the one-dimensional variable which intensively limit the deep research of the trust.On the basis of the above discussion,this study will treat trust as a multidimensional variable and employ questionnaires to explore the influence of trust on knowledge transfer and outsourcing performance during the software outsourcing process.In addition,the existing theoretical research system will be enriched and expanded.Furthermore,this study will provide theoretical guidance for the software outsourcing services in China.Detailed research contents are shown as the following.First of all,based on the large amount of reading of literature on software outsourcing,trust as well as knowledge transfer,the scope and the division of various dimensions of trust were defined.Corresponding concepts were sorted and distinguished.After that previous research results were reviewed and summarized.Additionally,constraints of the present and the trend of development were pointed out as well.Secondly,on the basis of previous studies,relations among trust,knowledge transfer and outsourcing performance were analyzed and the theoretical framework,conceptual model and corresponding assumptions were defined.By collecting the data obtained from questionnaires and using SPSS 19.0,the reliability and validity of the data were verified by employing explorative factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.Additionally,Smart PLS 3 was also used to establish the structural equation model(SEM)for the analysis the relations among multidimensional trust,different types of knowledge transfer and software outsourcing performance.Last but not the least,the conclusion was obtained.Various dimensional trusts have different influence of various types of knowledge transfer and outsourcing performance in which calculus-based trust has the most significant effect on outsourcing performance.Furthermore,knowledge transfer has different mediating effects on various dimensional trust and outsourcing performance in which knowledge transfer has completely mediating effect between ability-based trust and outsourcing performance and has partial mediating effect between calculus-based trust and outsourcing performance as well as kindness-based trust and outsourcing performance.