Background The information technology (IT) industry is a non-dispensable part of modern society, with information and communications technologies being integral parts of many businesses globally. The core product in information and communication technology is software. Its production has therefore become a crucial industry concern. Having been a closely guarded internal matter in the earlier stages of industry growth –where companies dedicated whole departments for the purpose- some companies deviated from this practice and instead sourced their software to companies that specialized in its production. (This was known as in-house software development). Organizations in the industry also exercised the option of contracting outsiders to develop their software (Huckvale et al, 2003, pp. 23). The main reason these companies opted for another avenue away from in-house development was staffing. The early stages of the computing industry leading to the late 1980s saw companies that had their software development departments undergo a phenomenal rise in the developer staff. This is because the software industry was immature with the products being inflexible for usage in the heterogeneous mainframes framework. Therefore, each company had to develop software for its own mainframes. In this regard, they had to increase their developing staff. The growth in the level of software used as the 1990s approached coupled with the increased complexity of software led to a further increase in the software teams. The resulting hike in payroll budgets and infrastructure costs became too expensive for individual companies whose core activity was not software development (Ishenko 2005, pp. 56). By 1994, companies were increasingly contracting software development and other IT tasks in a bid to save on expenditure and management effort. Software outsourcing came to be defined as ‘the contracting out of the development, planning, management, training, maintenance, or operation of software services, skills, products or applications’. Outsourcing took the place of in-house development and became a fast-growth industry (Sahay et al 2003, pp. 67). The industry comprised in-country and offshore outsourcing. The latter sect sector was involved contracting companies to carry out the software development. Many companies especially with the growth of globalization picked up the trend. Globalization had increased competition in the computing industry with other effects being: lower costs, faster market delivery, highly qualified personnel, increased quality service quality, and customer proximity. Some aspects of the software development function made it suitable for offshore outsourcing: the ability for the job to be done from a distance; the jobs’ heavy information load; high inter-country wage difference; and the repetitive nature. Near-shore outsourcing is a version of offshore outsourcing whereby the countries targeted are culturally and geographically close to the outsourcer’s mother country. The fact that software development companies are able to supplement their income with outsourcing contracts greatly pushes the practice. The client companies are also able to free up t