Case study of Campbell Soup Company: Harmonizing Processes and Empowering Workers

PART TWO: INFORMATION LITERACY
The original key source cited in the literature regarding the core benefits of IT outsourcing is an article by Subhankar Dhar and Bindu Balakrishnan (2006), “Risks, Benefits, and Challenges in Global IT Outsourcing: Perspectives and Practices,” published in the Journal of Global Information Management.
The original source discusses several aspects of IT outsourcing besides the benefits it affords businesses. For instance, it examines the risks that small and big businesses face when outsourcing IT services, as well as the challenges they encounter in their efforts to implement outsourced IT solutions. The authors state that the desire to outsource IT functions is driven by economic and strategic calculations in which businesses aim to achieve “lower costs, improved productivity, higher quality, higher customer satisfaction, and ability to focus on core areas are some of the benefits of outsourcing” (Dhar & Balakrishnan 2006; 39). In addition, they identify risks such as quality concerns, intellectual property issues and enforcing legal contracts.
Under theoretical frameworks, the authors identify various theoretical perspectives that justify the need for IT outsourcing. They include Transactional Cost Theory, Coordination Theory and Agency Theory, which make arguments for the need to reduce and share costs, involve a more qualified agent, as well as the need to delegate some costs.
According to Google Scholar, this study is cited in 101 related articles. The treatment of the original source in some of the selected articles is discussed below.
Khi, N. Z. (2013). “ICT Outsourcing Information Security Risk Factors: An Exploratory Analysis of Threat Risks Factor for Critical Project Characteristics,” Journal of Industrial and Intelligent Information, vol. 1 no. 4, pp 218-223.
This article focuses on identifying potential information security risks that companies get exposed to as a result of outsourcing IT services. The aim of the present research is to explore possible solutions that companies can implement to avoid the security risks associated with outsourcing. In their reference to the original source, the authors focus on the IT outsourcing risks identified by Dhar & Balakrishnan (2006). Although Khi mentions the benefits that businesses can gain through outsourcing IT functions, they do not cite previous sources to support their claims. This is largely attributed to the fact that the present study is not focused on discussing the benefits of IT outsourcing, but its threats. Consequently, the information they borrow from the original source is the one dealing with the risks of outsourcing. In addition, the authors state what the original source states in the literature review section, and not what the researchers state in their conclusions. In this regard, it is clear that Khi did not use the original source to inform the current paper’s perspective, but to get information that previous studies had gathered on the topic in question. In other words, the author of the secondary source did not go into the trouble of studying all the previous studies, but made use of the review of the literature provided by Dhar and Balakrishnan. The curren...