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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how individual project members in IT offshore outsourcing projects cope with culture‐specific behavior, and how the project members' cultural intelligence enables the emergence of negotiated culture.

The employed research approach is an interpretive, in‐depth single‐case study based on 31 qualitative interviews. The cultural intelligence framework serves as a “sensitizing device” to develop a model of cross‐cultural interaction in IT offshore outsourcing projects.

The paper presents a model explaining cross‐cultural interaction at the individual level in IT offshore outsourcing. The analysis shows that effective cross‐cultural interaction manifests itself in active cross‐cultural adaptation behavior, which is driven by motivational and cognitive factors. Cultural intelligence, including cognitive, motivational, and behavioral elements, is found to be an important driver for the development of a negotiated culture, characterized by trust‐based interpersonal relationships, shared understanding, and the effective resolution of conflicts in IT offshore outsourcing projects.

This study helps to understand how the emergence of a negotiated culture depends upon the cultural intelligence of individual project members. Practitioners need to focus on the accumulation of cultural intelligence in their project teams.

This study makes a theoretical contribution to the IT offshore outsourcing domain by presenting a model of individual‐level cross‐cultural interaction in this context. Furthermore, it represents one of the first qualitative case studies on cultural intelligence in IS.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent trends and issues in global IT sourcing and to introduce papers in the special issue: “Social, managerial and knowledge aspects in global IT sourcing”.

The paper examines trends by regions including Brazil, Russia, India and China and also trends in Captive Centres and their strategies.

There will be a continuing rise in outsourcing revenues for global outsourcing, with BPO overtaking ITO within five years. Multi‐sourcing will continue to be the dominant trend. India will continue to dominate but its role will change. China heralds promise but will still struggle to achieve scale in Western European and North American markets. Emerging country competition will intensify. Software as a service will be a “slow burner” but will gain momentum in the second half of the next decade. Near‐shoring will be a strong trend. Outsourcing, by offering a potential alternative, will help discipline in‐house capabilities and service. Knowledge process outsourcing will increase as the BRIC and emerging countries move up the value chain. Captive activity – both buying and selling – will increase (see below). Outsourcing successes and disappointments will continue as both clients and suppliers struggle to deal with a highly dynamic set of possibilities

The paper is of value to both academics and practitioners working in the field of IT sourcing. The study of captive centres is in its early stages and the paper introduces further work in this area.