Behavioural Science – Part 1

Global Sourcing IT Industry

Mahmudur Rahman Manna ^[ref]

 

This writing is to identify specific components involved in global sourcing for IT services and signify there behavioural patterns and relationships among them. Try will be to bring out key elements that drives the process to success or turns into frustration.

Introduction

Psychology, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and political science; current organisational behavioural science discusses about these topics. When two organisations get involved in a set of processes then the significant importance of organisation behavioural science becomes stronger.  Engagement chemistry has a bold impact on and in the involved organisations.

 

Type mismatch is a usual error we have to take care of in our programming life. And in polymorphic and dynamic context, casting is a solution mostly we use. If an Interface (template or set of standard definitions) is implemented in our local context (inner organisation) and if the Interface is available in remote context then there is good possibility that our implementation will be recognisable over there. Other than that we have to customize our implementation or set our Interface there newly. Now commonly everyone is used to with the word “lookup”. In solution development normally we use this lookup with our Interface name in remote contexts to check if there is any implementation available for such interface.  

Sourcing triggers with this lookup task.  Hundreds of organisations having this lookup every day to get their suitable providers. Some of them have some standard of doing so and many of them don’t know even how to do this. The consideration of behavioural science should pop up here before starting this lookup. 

Perspectives of Different Levels

There are specific levels in each organisation.  Each level most of the time act as an independent entity with its own attitudes and attributes.  On the same issue, a level would have different messages or thoughts differ from other levels.

 

In an organisation normal chemistry happens among:

Global Manager -- Department Manager -- Team Manager -- Team member 

As they represents their level with more or less understanding of his/her environment. But when it comes to an engagement of two or more different organisations for a specific goal then the ancient chemistry not works anymore.  The cross communicative functionalities gets a rapid increase on Team Level and as it is the operational level,  constitutional wrong mapping on that level would create more trouble and cost for both companies. Our case is IT engagements, so we will focus more on IT issues.  

 

A Scenario

The sourcing may be coming out from client IT department budget but other departments get involved into it more closely. Even it gets more competitive when there are different providers and vendors. Even there are cases where in same solution different providers working together -

 

Isn’t it already a chaos, stressful to think the level of interaction required here? It rarely found as homogenous but most of the time in heterogeneous form.  And it gets more complex when a Mediator Organisation walks in and takes ownership and deals with the providers.  May be a relief for sourcing organisation managers, but the social environment that builds up here is off course not hygienic, if there is no ownership to take care of the hygiene and look into the behavioural chemistry to provide stability.

Current market packages with different terms available for IT sourcing:

-          Consultancy/ professional services
-          Product based
-          Fixed
-          Development centre/ offsite
-          Onsite
-          Hybrid (onsite offsite )
-          Virtual Captive model
-          ……

 

Team and Individual

Our focus part will be the team and individuals in team and the elements they deal with.

As we are here for responding to globalization, behavioural science can meet the challenges that help to overcome stress and absenteeism here. We will try to figure out, how these challenges can be meet by behavioural science.

-           Workforce Diversity
-          Improving Quality and Productivity
-          Improving Skill
-          Empowering
-          Coping with frequent changes
-          Stimulating Innovation
-          Improving Ethical Behaviour

      

Typical Scenario of Team formation

Off course it varies based on which engagement model we are following but typically a project initiates the whole formation.

• Projects are the initiators of engagements. 
• Projects are the initiators of changes in engagements.
• Projects come with a budget and target and a deadline.
• Projects not always come with plan.  

  

And whenever it’s there, the owner starts the “lookup” with his/her budget.  Owner wants to earn the credit of making its success within budget, if possible save some from budget.  And this parameter in lookup task filters the existing or new providers.

 

References

John B. Miner, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Foundations, Theories, and Analyses, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002

Stephen P. Robbins, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, Prentice Hall International, Inc.

Fonstad, Nils, and Robertson, Engaging for Change: An Overview of the IT Engagement Model, CISR Research Briefing, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), March 2005.

 Craig Schiff, Engagement Management is Key to Implementation Success, http://www.information-management.com/issues/20040401/1000840-1.html , November, 6^th 2011.

Dr. Z , Business of Stress: Rise of the Type A Machines, http://www.stresshacker.com/2010/01/business-of-stress-rise-of-the-type-a-machines/, November, 6^th 2011.

Donald Bell, UML basics: The component diagram, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/dec04/bell/, November, 6^th 2011.

Ilan Oshri and Julia Kotlarsky, Special Issue on Global Sourcing: IT Services, Knowledge and Social Capital, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/journal/v23/n1/full/2000129a.html#bib7 , November, 6^th 2011.