D. Petkov, O. Petkova/A Multicriteria Model for Selecting of IT Activities to Outsource A MULTICRITERIA MODEL FOR SELECTING OF IT ACTIVITIES TO OUTSOURCE Don Petkov∗ Department of Business Administration Eastern Connecticut State University Willimantic, CT, USA E-mail: petkovd@easternct.edu Olga Petkova School of Business Central Connecticut State University New Britain, CT, USA E-mail: petkovao@ccsu.edu ABSTRACT In this paper we are concerned with the decisions in IT outsourcing. Lacity and Willcocks provide after extensive empirical work three separate two dimensional decision models involving contributions of the IT activity to the business positioning, to the business operations; in-house scale and management practices; degree of IT integration and technology maturity. We propose a multicriteria model for the selection of IT activities to be outsourced that integrates the findings of Lacity and Willcocks and the concepts of AHP for better holistic decisions in IT outsourcing. Keywords: Decision to outsource, AHP, Information Technology outsourcing. 1.Introduction The importance of the decisions associated with implementing Information Technology (IT) outsourcing has been stressed in the literature (see Schniederjans (2007)). It is related to the contradicting evidence through various practitioner outlets like Gartner reports and others in favor and against outsourcing presented in Lacity and Rottman (2008). The discussion of the quality of IT outsourcing decisions in Palvia (2002) and Kakabadze and Kakabadze (2002) points to the need for its improvement. The need for multidimensional assessment of outsourcing decisions was first pointed in general terms by Ventakraman (1997). Huizingh and Vrolijk (1996) pointed the potential for using a multicriteria decision making (MCDM) approach, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (see Saaty,2008a) in IT outsourcing management as one of the Information Systems applications of AHP. Among some of the early applications of AHP to IT outsourcing could be listed Petkov and Petkova (1999), who propose a model for the selection of an outsourcing vendor; Udo (2000) and Yang and Hwang (2000) present models for IT outsourcing ∗ Corresponding author ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The authors are grateful to Professor Thomas Saaty and Rozann Saaty for creating the global inspirational atmosphere for applying AHP for better decision making.