IT outsourcing (ITO) remains a popular business practice, but many buyers and suppliers of IT services are caught in a vicious relationship spiral of low trust, bad collaboration and mediocre performance. This paper describes a novel process understanding of how vicious cycles work and suggests a new method for how they can be reversed into virtuous cycles. Based on the action research and complementary system dynamics simulation, this paper demonstrates how an ineffective ITO relationship between a European Harbour Authority and its main IT supplier ITCo was formed and, later, transformed. The method, involving collaborative redesign of service workflows, applied in this action research triggered the reversal of an otherwise downward relationship spiral. Both the empirical facts from the action research data and the system dynamics simulation data are provided as evidence. We conclude the paper with conceptual and methodological contributions as well as scope for future research.

中文翻译：

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扭转关系螺旋式发展：IT外包从恶性循环到良性循环

IT外包（ITO）仍然是一种流行的商业惯例，但是许多IT服务的买方和供应商陷入了信任度低，协作不良和性能不佳的恶性关系。本文描述了一种关于恶性循环如何工作的新颖过程理解，并提出了一种新的方法来将其逆转为良性循环。基于行动研究和互补的系统动力学模拟，本文说明了欧洲港务局与其主要IT供应商ITCo之间无效的ITO关系是如何形成的，然后又进行了转换。在这项行动研究中应用的涉及服务工作流程协同重新设计的方法触发了相反的向下螺旋关系的逆转。来自行动研究数据的经验事实和系统动力学仿真数据均提供了证据。我们以概念和方法论上的贡献以及未来研究的范围来结束本文。