From the editors

Welcome to the last issue for this year. It was exactly a year ago that we devoted an entire issue to present a rather comprehensive survey of IS Outsourcing. Needless to say, we felt that a set of new papers would be a good follow-up and therefore present three studies as part of a special IS outsourcing section for this issue.The first paper by Aubert, Patry, and Rivard provide a useful framework that practitioners and researcher alike can use when dealing with the uncertainty inherent in IT outsourcing. They combine ideas from Transaction Cost Theory and Agency Theory along with other factors to produce a framework to understand types of risks potentially associated with an outsourcing project and mechanisms or strategies for risk management.The second paper by Marcolin and Ross brings in the notion of equifinality to the IS sourcing process - that being there are many equally viable routes to developing an IS capability. Eschewing the notion of a single "right" sourcing decision, the authors present an IS-Business Partnering framework that demonstrates the multiplicity of options that may be viable.Finally, Goles and Chin attempt to disentangle the multidimensional nature of an outsourcing relationship. Using Relational Exchange theory as the backdrop, the authors developed a parsimonious set of items that future researchers may find helpful for assessing either process factors (i.e., communication, conflict resolution, coordination, cooperation, and integration or attributes (i.e., commitment, consensus, cultural compatibility, flexibility, trust, and interdependence) of an outsourcing relationship.In addition to our outsourcing section, the last paper by Im and Baskerville provide an interesting revisit of information security threats. In a replication of a study 12 years ago, they found that while the frequency of various threats have remained relatively stable, risks due to human error seems to be increasing. In turn, the authors introduce a more detailed taxonomy that considers whether the human error was skill-based, rule-based, or knowledge-based. Enjoy.