Investigating the Impact of Outsourcing on IT Flexibility: The Conceptual Independence Perspective

Modern healthcare organizations try to leverage their IT infrastructures to enhance the efficiency of processes and the quality of patient services. The flexibility of the IT infrastructure is a critical factor in the process of establishing strategic and operational value. The authors examine how applied principles of Conceptual Independence (CI) in information systems (IS) influence the flexibility of IT infrastructures. Furthermore, it is presumed that IT outsourcing plays a role in IT flexibility. The second question asks whether IT outsourcing configurations change when CI has been applied or not. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected in 9 mental healthcare organizations. Findings – based on integration of the data with a mixed-method approach - suggest that the healthcare organizations that apply the principles of CI are better equipped to adapt their IT infrastructure to changing demands, requests and needs. Likewise, results suggest that they have changed the government of IT outsourcing thereby increasing IT flexibility even further.