ABSTRACT
Contracts are very important to IT outsourcing partnerships. They enable the participants to manage their relationships (Lacity and Hirschheim 1995; Saunders et al. 1997; Cullen and Willcocks 2003). When contracts are drawn up, it is important that their structure matches the partnership’s context: the contract for a relationship with a limited scope and involving only one provider will obviously be very different from that of a worldwide partnership with many parties. Attention must also be paid to the market conformance of the IT services to be delivered. Benchmarking is one of the means by which this may be achieved. Considering the dynamics of many IT outsourcing partnerships, however, it often is not possible to define all aspects right from the start. Service recipients and their providers will therefore have to make agreements on how to change parts of their contracts when needed. By making such changes to the contracts, the fit can be maintained between the recipient’s needs and the IT services delivered.
