Do they read your research? An investigation of practitioners’ use of IT outsourcing and cloud sourcing research

Abstract: Significant concerns have been raised in the Information Systems (IS) field about a research-practice gap and the limited impact of IS research on the practice world. Theory-practice inconsistencies in the field of IT outsourcing (ITO) prompted the investigation of the use of academic-generated knowledge by ITO practitioners. We conducted interviews and a survey and found academic research is the least used source of decision-making knowledge among ITO practitioners. Practitioners preferred to seek advice from their peers, IT vendors and consultants. We identified two communities of users and nonusers of academic research in our sample of ITO practitioners, with non-users forming the majority. We found six factors that may influence the use of academic research by practitioners. Non-users of academic research held perceptions that academic research was not timely, required too much time to read, was far from the real world and that it was not a commonly used knowledge source for practitioners. In addition, they read academic research less frequently and did not perceive themselves as an audience for academic research.