Exploration of the evolution process of IT outsourcing from 1992 to 2011: A main path analysis

The aim of this paper is to identify a set of papers that play the central role in IT Outsourcing (ITO) field and to analyze the evolution process that has taken place in ITO. The methodology is based on the main path analysis which is aimed to trace the main knowledge flow through a citation network that is formed by the citation relationship among papers in a scientific field. Results show that the ITO development process can largely be divided into three stages: at the beginning the studies concentrated on the determinants and decision problems of ITO, and then the ITO entered into a fast development stage, till now it has matured enough that researchers try to extend both breadth and depth of the research.