One of the key IT strategic decisions for a firm is to select the geographic and governance platform for its primary and support functions. Firms are increasingly advancing their information technology outsourcing (ITO) from on site to offshore site to manage their cost/benefit concerns and achieve their strategic objectives. In ITO, a firm delegates its information technology development to be managed and delivered by cross organizations. Moreover, offshore outsourcing inter-organization collaborative software development is further conducted by a cross organizational global virtual team to complete high quality projects between developing countries and developed countries in the contemporary global wide IT collaborative market. However, despite the growing significance of offshore outsourcing information technology in Western countries, there is limited understanding of the similar scenario of inter-organizational collaborative software development by global virtual team operations between Taiwan and China in a large scale banking industry. Therefore, this dissertation addresses these considerations.

The empirical analysis along with the descriptive and explanative case study indicate that big firms with stronger organizational fundamental and management process contingency are more likely to be engaged in offshore outsourcing inter-organizational collaborative software development through global virtual team operations. Furthermore, well-performed process and high quality product of such cross organizational virtual team projects will be successfully committed to by managing communication effectiveness and absorptive knowledge exchange capacity. Chapter 1 outlines the objectives and issues relating to offshore outsourcing collaborative software development and virtual team characteristics between offshore outsourcing demander and provider, Chapter 2 reviews the related academic literatures, Chapter 3 describes and discusses theoretical frameworks, as will as research methods rooted on selected literature reviews, and Chapter 4 states the related hypothesis testing. Chapter 5 further explores the research methodology and Chapter 6 and 7 discuss the results and limitations.