Likely reasons for unsuccessful IS outsourcing ventures can be ascribed to divergent expectations of both parties and an insufficient governance of the outsourcing relationship. The objective of this thesis is to explore and understand different types of IS outsourcing relationships and their configuration depending on the underlying client expectations. Appropriate governance mechanisms for the successful management of IS outsourcing relationships are identified for each type. This work applies a multi-method approach and triangulates results from qualitative and quantitative methods. An empirical-quantitative, exploratory study is conducted among German IT managers, resulting in 268 data points. The data is analyzed with multivariate analyses to identify homogeneous client groups. Then a governance model is developed and tested with PLS to examine different governance approaches and their effect on outsourcing success for each group.
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