eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Cloud based information systems are considered to benefit the organizations through their superior information capabilities compared to traditional information systems. Strong adoption of the cloud computing in the recent years has also affected the view on outsourcing of information technology enabled processes and led to creation of new service offerings represented by a combination of cloud and outsourcing. Earlier research closely considers the benefits of cloud computing and business process outsourcing. However, the empirical evidence of the positive relationship between the use of the cloud and outsourcing and organizational performance is lacking. The focus of the current research is to fill in this gap and analyze managerial perceptions of the value of cloud based information systems by grouping organizations based on their outsourcing pattern: 1) non-outsourcing, 2) selective outsourcing and 3) total outsourcing. Results of the analysis revealed the higher perceived improvements for cloud users compared to non-cloud users for organizations that perform processes in-house and practice selective outsourcing. For organizations, which are inclined towards total outsourcing, the use of cloud does not lead to significantly higher improvements. The clusters with low number of cloud users and outsourcing perceived most improvements in basic accuracy and data quality, while the clusters with high number of cloud users perceived highest improvements in accessibility. Based on the findings six propositions are identified and suggested for further research.