Uncertainties at the IT Project Bidding Stage: A Socio‐Technical Perspective on the Sources of Uncertainties From the Vendor's Perspective

ABSTRACT Given the competitiveness within the information technology (IT) services market, organizations increasingly outsource projects via bidding. The bidding process is subject to several uncertainties for both the customer (outsourcer) and IT vendor (outsourced) organizations. We study the uncertainties at the bidding stage from the IT vendor perspective. We conducted an inductive study interviewing 20 IT practitioners across five IT vendor organizations. We identified 90 uncertainty variables by analysing these data following an iterative inductive coding approach. Based on our analysis and guided by the socio‐technical systems (STS) theory as the theoretical lens, we propose a theoretical framework for representing the uncertainties at the IT project bidding stage. We validated our framework using vignettes. The identified uncertainty variables and proposed framework offer both theoretical and practical contributions, providing IT vendor managers with valuable insights for more effective bidding strategies.