近幾年來，多源委外模式已演進為一種企業獲取資訊科技服務的新趨勢。運用多源委外模式，業主將其企業的資訊服務功能同時外包給二家以上的廠商，透過廠商之間的服務競爭，期可提升廠商的服務品質，並可借以消除委外服務中可能發生的不確定性與風險。當企業運用多源委外策略時，業主與廠商的關係，以及競爭廠商間相對的競爭力都會對業主與廠商的策略產生重要的影響。
過去的文獻在服務競爭的研究大多假設委外業主沒有偏好，卻忽略了在實務上業主對廠商存在偏好與服務成本不對稱的事實，因此所能揭露的資訊相當有限。本論文即考慮一個兩階段的資訊科技服務委外的競爭賽局：業主將其資訊科技服務業務的合約分成相等的兩期，並將每期需求量分為二個部份，同時外包給二家廠商，第一期不同的需求分配量反應了業主對某一廠商的偏好程度；要求廠商在第一期以其服務水準做為競爭，服務水準較高者則在第二期獲得較大比例的需求量作為報酬，以期獲取更高的利益。在此業主扮演一位領導者，首先決定委外的價格，而兩位廠商則扮演追隨者同時在第一期選擇服務水準進行競爭。
本研究主要在探討業主對廠商的偏好程度與廠商間的成本不對稱兩項因素如何個別與共同影響廠商服務的競爭與業主的價格決策與利潤。並以賽局理論探討廠商間的競爭行為與業主的均衡決策；並且利用參數分析來探討這兩項因素對廠商與業主均衡決策的影響，最後依分析結果歸納出重要的管理意涵提供業主進行決策時的參考。

The provision and acquisition of IT services bring strategic
considerations to the client-vendor relationship in both private and public sectors. Multiple sourcing through service competition has been considered a helpful mechanism for clients to avoid outsourcing risks and elicit a higher level of IT service through vendor competition.
Previous studies of service competition have focused on the setting where a client possesses no preference towards the vendors, and hence little information regarding how service competition can benefit clients with vendor preference has been offered. This dissertation therefore aims to investigate a client's sourcing strategy by employing a two-stage service provision game in which two vendors, with asymmetric cost in service provision, are encouraged to compete for a client's outsourced demand, which is divided into two prearranged demand allocations. The demand allocation before service competition reflects the degree of the client's preference towards a vendor, while the demand allocation after service competition reflects vendor shares regarding the competition result. The client is a Stackelberg leader who determines
the outsourcing price in Stage 1, and the vendors are the followers who compete on service provision in Stage 2 through profit maximization.
The main focus of this research is firstly on characterizing how the client's vendor preference and the vendors' relative cost competitiveness influence the vendors' service provision and the client's price decision, and secondly on exploring how these two factors individually and jointly affect the vendors' service provision and the client's price decision and profit.
Finally, insights from the analysis of this study are provided into how the client can make decisions to maximize its profit.

G. Allon and A. Federgruen. Competition in service industries. Operations Research, 55(1):37–55, 2007.
G. Allon and A. Federgruen. Service competition with general queueing facilities. Operations Research, 56(4):827–849, 2008.
R. Aron, E. Clemons, and S. Reddi. Just right outsourcing: understanding and managing risk. Journal of Management Information Systems, 22(2):37–55, 2005.
B. Aubert, S. Dussault, M. Patry, and S. Rivard. Managing the risk of IT outsourcing. Proceedings of the 32nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1999.
B. Auguste, Y. Hao, M. Singer, and M. Wiegand. The other side of outsourcing. McKinsey Quarterly, 26(1):52–63, 2002.
B. Bahli and R. Rivard. The information technology outsourcing risk: a transaction cost and agency theory-based perspective. Journal of Information Technology, 18:
211–221, 2003.
S. Bandyopadhyay, J. Barron, and A. Chaturvedi. Competition among sellers in online exchanges. Information Systems Research, 16(1):47–60, 2005.
R. Bapna, A. Barua, D. Mani, and A. Mehra. Cooperation, coordination, and governance in multisourcing: An agenda for analytical and empirical research. Information
Systems Reserach, 21(4):785–795, 2010.
S. Benjaafar, E. Elahi, and K. Donohue. Outsourcing via service competition. Management Science, 53(2):241–259, 2007.
F. Bernstein and A. Federgruen. A general equilibrium model for industries with price and service competition. Operations Research, 52(6):868–886, 2004.
H. Bester, A. Palma, W. Leininger, J. Thomas, and E. von Thadden. A noncooperative analysis of hotelling’s location game. Games and Economic Behavior, 12(2):165–186, 2005.
S. Bhattacharya, A. Gupta, and S. Hasija. Single sourcing versus multisourcing: The role of effort interdependence, metric-outcome misalignment, and incentive design. INSEAD Working Paper No. 201226TOM Working Paper Series, 2012.
G. Cachon and F. Zhang. Obtaining fast service in a queueing system via performancebased allocation of demand. Management Science, 53(3):408–420, 2007.
N. Carr. IT doesn’t matter. Harvard Business Review, 81(5):41–49, 2003.
S. Chakrabarty. Strategies for Business Process outsourcing: An Analysis of Alternatives,
Opportunities and Risks, Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing., 2007.
I. Chioveanu. Price and quality competition. Journal of Economics, 107(1):23–44, 2012.
L. Cohen and A. Young. Multisourcing: Moving beyond outsourcing to achieve growth and agility. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2006.
J. Cross. IT outsourcing: British Petroleum’s competitive approach. Harvard Business Review, 73(3):94–102, 1995.
S. Cullen and L. Willcocks. Analysing four types of IT sourcing decisions in the context of scale, clientsupplier interdependency and risk mitigation. Information Systems
Journal, 8(2):119–143, 1998.
S. Cullen, P. Seddona, and L. Willcocks. IT outsourcing configuration: Research into defining and designing outsourcing arrangements. Journal of Strategic Information
Systems, 14:357–387, 2005.
W. Currie. Using multiple suppliers to mitigate the risk of IT outsourcing at ICI and Wessex Water. Journal of Information Technology, 13(3):169–180, 1998.
T. Davenport. The coming commoditization of processes. Harvard Business Review, 83(6):101–108, 2005.
S. Deng and W. Elmaghraby. Supplier selection via tournament. Production and Operations Management, 14(2):252–267, 2005.
J. Dibbern, T. Goles, and B. Hirschheim, R.and Jayatilaka. Information systems outsourcing: a survey and analysis of the literature. Database for Advances in Information
Systems, 35(4):6–102, 2004.
A. DiRomualdo and V. Gurbaxani. Strategic intent for IT outsourcing. Sloan Management Review, 39(4):67–80, 1998.
B. Dos Santos. Information technology investments: Characteristics, choices, market risk and value. Information Systems Frontiers, 5(3):289–301, 2003.
S. Dutta, M. Bergen, and G. John. The governance of exclusive territories when dealers can bootleg. Marketing Science, 13(1):83–99, 1994.
M. Earl. The risks of outsourcing IT. Sloan Management Review, 37(3):26–32, 1996.
C. Forelle. J.P. Morgan ends accord with IBM. The Wall Street Journal, 2004. September 16, 2004.
J. Goo, R. Kishore, K. Nam, H. Rao, and Y. Song. An investigation of factors that
influence the duration of IT outsourcing relationships. Decision Support Systems, 42: 2017–2125, 2008.
V. Grover, M. Cheon, and T. Teng. The effect of service quality and partnership on the outsourcing of information systems functions. Management Information Systems, 12
(4):89–116, 1996.
A. Ha, L. Li, and S. Ng. Price and delivery logistics competition in a supply chain. Management Science, 49(9):1139–1153, 2003.
C. He and y. Chen. Managing e-marketplace: A strategic analysis of nonprice advertising. Marketing Science, 25(2):175–187, 2006.
C. Hsieh and P. Kuo. Analysis of a dual-sourcing service provision game with symmetric and asymmetric vendors. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 35(8):3998–4007, 2011.
B. Huber. Agile multi-sourcing: A critical business trend: Concepts and background. Technical Report 30, TPI, March 2008.
G. Iyer. Coordinating channels under price and nonprice competition. Marketing Science, 17(4):338–355, 1998.
G. Iyer and D. Kuksov. Competition in consumer shopping experience. Marketing Science, 31(6):913–933, 2012.
Y. Jin and J. Ryan. Price and service competition in an outsourced supply chain. Production and Operations Management, 21(2):331–344, 2012.
A. Kalnins and K. Mayer. Relationships and hybrid contracts: An analysis of contract choice in Information Technology. Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, 20
(1):207–229, 2004.
T. Kern and L. Willcocks. Contracts, control, and presentation in it outsourcing: Research in thirteen UK organizations. Journal of Global Information Management,
8(4):15–29, 2000.
M. Lacity and R. Hirschheim. Information Systems Outsourcing. John Wiley & Sons, 1993.
M. Lacity and L. Willcocks. An empirical investigation of information technology sourcing practices: Lessons from experience. MIS Quarterly, 22(3):363–408, 1998.
M. Lacity, S. Khan, and L. Willcocks. A review of the IT outsourcing literature: Insights for practice. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 18(3):130–146, 2009.
N. Levina and N. Su. Global multisourcing strategy: The emergence of a supplier portfolio in services offshoring. Decision Sciences, 39(3):541–570, 2008.
K. Moorthy. Product and price competition in a duopoly. Marketing Science, 7(2): 141–168, 1988.
K. Nam, S. Rajagopalan, H. Rao, and A. Chaudhury. A two-level investigation of information systems outsourcing. Communications of the ACM, 39(7):36–44, 1996.
O. Ngwenyama and N. Bryson. Making the information systems outsourcing decision: A transaction cost approach to analyzing outsourcing decision problems. European
Journal of Operational Research, 115(2):351–367, 1999.
M. Osborne. An introduction to Game Theory. Oxford University Press, New York, 2004.
I. Oshri and J. Kotlarsky. Realising the real benefits of outsourcing: Seven steps to effective outsourcing measurement. Warwick Business School, 2009.
M. Porter. Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Free Press, 1985.
R. Poston, W. J. Kettinger, and J. C. Simon. Managing the vendor set: Achieving best pricing and quality service in IT outsourcing. MIS Quarterly Executive, 8(2): 45–58, 2009.
S. Raghunathan, A. Prasad, B. Mishra, and H. Chang. Open source versus closed source: Software quality in monopoly and competitive markets. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics—Part A: Systems and Humans, 35(6):903–918,
2005.
G. Roels, U. Karmarkar, and S. Carr. Contracting for collaborative services. Management Science, 56(5):849–863, 2010.
J. Rottman and M. Lacity. Proven practices for effectively offshoring IT work. MIT Sloan Management Review,, 47(3):56–64, 2006.
D. Schaffhauser. Details from GM IT outsourcing awards. Available at http://www.sourcingmag.com/content/c060202a.asp, 2006.
H. Shin, W. Benton, and M. Jun. Quantifying suppliers product quality and delivery performance: A sourcing policy decision model. Computers & Operations Research, 36(8):2462–2471, 2009.
B. Skaistis. Outsourcing and the strong CIO. Computerworld, 2007. April 30, 2007.
N. Su and N. Levina. Global multisourcing strategy: Integrating learning from manufacturing into IT service outsourcing. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management,
58(4):717–729, 2011.
A. Tsay and N. Agrawal. Channel conflict and coordination in the e-commerce age. Production and Operations Management, 13(1):93–110, 2004.
X. Wang and B. Yang. Mixed-strategy equilibria in a quality differentiation model. International Journal of Industrial Organization, 19(1):213–226, 2001.
L. Willcocks and M. Lacity. The Practice of Outsourcing: From Information Systems to BPO and Offshoring. Palgrave, London, U.K.: Palgrave, 2009.
L. Willcocks, M. Lacity, and T. Kern. Risk mitigation in IT outsourcing strategy revisited: Longitudinal case research at LISA. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 8(5):285–314, 1999.
L. Willcocks, I. Oshri, J. Kotlarsky, and J. Rottman. Outsourcing and offshoring engineering projects: Understanding the value, sourcing models, and coordination
practices. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 58(4):706–716, 2011.
Z. Wu and T. Choi. Supplier–supplier relationships in the buyer–supplier triad: Building theories from eight case studies. Journal of Operations Management, 24(1):27–52, 2005.
Z. Yang, G. Aydin, V. Babich, and D. Beil. Using a dual-sourcing option in the presence of asymmetric information about supplier reliability: Competition vs. diversification.
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 14(2):202–217, 2012.
T. Yao, B. Jiang, S. Young, and S. Talluric. Outsourcing timing, contract selection, and negotiation. International Journal of Production Research, 48(2):305–326, 2010.
Z. Zhang, D. Dey, and Y. Tan. Price and QoS competition in data communication services. European Journal of perational Research, 187(3):871–886, 2008.