IT offshoring: Trust views from client and vendor perspectives

This article is about the role played by trust in structuring and shaping offshoring projects and how cultural differences interfere in the related inter-firms relationships. The study, conducted with three IT service provider companies established in Tunisia, has provided a dataset that confirms the structuring role of trust in terms of transferability effect between the client and the offshoring unit. Findings indicate that trust is perceived as an influencing factor when it is situated at the inter-organizational level and not at the interpersonal level for all the actors concerned. This finding is independent of the cultural affiliation (individualistic versus collectivist). While cultural differences are not "negotiated" the same way by all of the respondents, trust seems noticeably more difficult to settle between the Tunisian partners than between the Tunisian offshoring unit and its European clients.