Information technology. Software production evaluation

2001 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 1889-1907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Feakins

The offshore outsourcing of software-production services to places outside of the established networks in well-developed core economies is a dynamic and topical aspect of contemporary reorganizations in the software-development industries. Software production and related information technology services are outsourced to firms offshore or, more specifically, to places where labor skills appropriate to these industries are available at lower costs. Notable offshore destinations include: India, Russia, Ireland, Israel, Romania, and Ukraine, among several others. The offshore outsourcing of software production involves complex introductions, reorganizations, and compositions of production chains and management structures in the continuing negotiation of how relations and work processes will be governed across spaces. The author documents the roles of certification—ISO 9000 and CMM—as new governmental forms that shape understandings, perceptions, and strategies for becoming recognized within the offshore. Drawing on field research with over twenty firms in St Petersburg, Russia, the author proposes that certification is an emergent form of governance that embodies specific processes of globalization.


2009 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Jullien

Whatever its name, Free/Libre or Open Source Software (FLOSS), diffusion represents one of the main evolutions of the Information Technology (IT) industry in recent years. Operating System Linux, or Web server Apache (more than 60% market share on its market), database MySQL or PHP languages are some examples of broadlyused FLOSS programs. One of the most original characteristics of this movement is its collective, cooperative software development organization in which a growing number of firms is involved (some figures in Lakhani & Wolf (2005)). Of course, programs, because they are codified information, are quite easy to exchange, and make the cooperation easier than in other industries. But, as pointed out by Stallman (1998), if sharing pieces of software within firms was a dominant practice in the 1950’s, it declined in the 1970’s, and almost disappeared in the 1980’s, before regaining and booming today.


This section of the book presents the second dimension of the AGG model (the governance realm). It discusses why it is necessary to understand the concept of governance in a general sense, as well as in the corporate and in the information technology senses. If this book argues that an enterprise's observable architectural characteristics determine its governance issues, and that the governance agenda of the enterprise determines its measurable growth conditions, then it is imperative that the concept of governance should be specified. This chapter deals with the concept of governance in a general sense, highlighting those aspects that are necessary for a proper understanding of the operation of market architectures, as well as those aspects related to governance at the enterprise level. The chapter also discusses a special case of governance, the concept of “bazaar governance,” a form of governance structure that has emerged with the growth of the open source movement for the development of software production.


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