H/Mariam Getachew (PhD)Merdassa Waktola2021-01-152023-11-182021-01-152023-11-182019-06-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/24698IT/IS outsourcing emerged as an important tool for enabling organizations to improve the quality of their services, reduce IT costs, and obtain access to external resources. It has become an important aspect of the overall strategy of any organization including the banking industry whether it is a regulatory body or commercial. Despite its benefits, there are wide reports of unsuccessful IT/IS outsourcing experiences. One of the main reasons for such a high failure rate is associated with improper ITO decisions which are influenced by different external and internal factors. However, those factors influencing the IT/IS outsourcing decision are relatively not studied in the case of Ethiopian banking industry. This study was aimed to empirically investigate factors influencing IT/IS outsourcing in the case of the National Bank of Ethiopia. The Bank has outsourced different software developments and their maintenance, infrastructure supports, database supports, data center design, five years strategic plan of the Information System Management Directorate, VPN service and support, website development and many other IT services. While outsourcing all these services, the bank has no formal and documented outsourcing strategy and its outsourcing decisions are being influenced by different factors. Identifying those different factors influencing the Bank’s IT/IS outsourcing was the objective of this research. To guide and frame the research, a conceptual research model was developed by reviewing different literatures. The study employed the qualitative research methodology and used a semi-structured interview and document review to collect data. The collected data was analyzed according to the research objectives and questions. The result of the analysis show that there are macro-environmental factors such as political and legal (e.g., political unrest, pressure from international aid organization, government initiative,…), economic (e.g., Increase in currency exchange rate, price fluctuation, scarcity of foreign currency,…), social (Cross-language communications, public holidays,…), technological (e.g., Obsolescence of technology, emerging technology, complexity,…), industry (e.g., Standardization, Market Maturity,…) and internal (e.g., Lack of internal system development team, internal Capacity building, Lack of awareness, Internal bureaucracy, Involvement of the top management,…) factors influencing the Bank’s IT/IS outsourcing. XI The knowledge of these factors and their effects on IT/IS outsourcing could help CIOs or IT managers in developing their IT/IS outsourcing strategy and in order to have more managed IT outsourced services, decreased decision time and cost, and increased decision quality.enIT/IS OutsourcingITO DecisionFactors Influencing IT/IS OutsourcingThesis