Kate Vitasek

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About: 

Kate Vitasek is an international authority for her award-winning research and Vested business model for highly collaborative relationships. She is the author of six books on the Vested model and a faculty member at the University of Tennessee. She has been lauded by World Trade Magazine as one of the “Fabulous 50+1” most influential people impacting global commerce.  

From this author

Jan 31, 2013    0

I’ve talked a lot about “economic rationality” in outsourcing and business relationships in a globalised marketplace. This blog is dedicated to Paul Krugman, an economist and Nobel laureate, who fights for rationality mostly against great odds from within and without the economic community.

Krugman is a widely-read columnist for the New York Times, a prolific author of books and articles, and a frequent speaker and guest on news programs. He has a...

Dec 05, 2012    0

I’ve talked at length in this series recently about how academics and big thinkers have buttressed the importance of trust and collaboration in outsource deals. While it may seem like an anomaly, or at least a new idea, to mention cooperation and contracts in the same breath, it’s neither.

In fact cooperation is vital to the long-term success of contracts, as David Campbell and Donald Harris pointed out in 1993 in the ...

Nov 07, 2012    0

We know that trust, ethical behaviour and collaboration go hand-in-hand in our personal and social relationships. But how widespread are those things in our business and outsourcing relationships? Obviously they should be!

This is why I have chosen to feature Kenneth Arrow, an American economist and the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972...

Oct 04, 2012    0

This article originally appeared in Outsource Magazine Issue #29 Autumn 2012


After two years of blogging for Outsource I hope readers have at least heard of Vested Outsourcing and maybe even read one of our three books. But perhaps you have some doubts and concerns, so you are still waiting on the sidelines. All too often we hear, “I like the theory of Vested, but does it really work in the real world?...

Aug 02, 2012    0

This month’s column pays a tribute to Elinor Ostrom, who shared the Nobel Prize award in economic science in 2009 with Oliver Williamson. Ostrom, who died at age 78 on June 12, was cited by the Nobel Committee for “her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” a term that refers to resources that are owned or shared in common among communities...

Jun 12, 2012    0

Too often people and businesses are locked into either destructive I-win-you-lose relationships, or what I often call a “ping pong” match where you are in a so-so relationship but either don’t know there is a better way or don’t have the courage to get out because things are not actually bad.

Luckily, things are changing and people are starting to wake up to the fact that win-win approaches are real – and offer real advantage and are worth...

Jun 09, 2012    0

If you follow this column you know I am a fan of some of the behavioral and transaction cost economists, including John Nash and Oliver Williamson. This month I am adding Dan Ariely to my list of big thinkers.

I’ve been a fan of Ariely since reading his book Predictably Irrational. He is an Israeli-American professor of psychology and behavioral economics; he teaches at Duke University and is the...

May 16, 2012    0

Outsourcing involves major changes in your business model, your teams, your approach to core and non-core business lines and cultural mindsets.

That aspect of the outsource decision – change – is inherently psychological because when you come right down to it, it’s always about your people, their relationships and attitudes, and the way they adjust to new thinking and new patterns that will make or break an outsourcing partnership.

That’s also why as I...

Apr 04, 2012    0

This article originally appeared in Outsource Magazine Issue #27 Spring 2012


Deciding to outsource demands a thorough make/buy analysis. However, far too many companies take the concept of make-or-buy as black and white.  Dr. Oliver E. Williamson challenged the traditional make/buy decision process with his Nobel Prize-winning work in the area of transaction cost economics. Williamson received the Nobel Prize in 2009.

...
Mar 07, 2012    0

This month’s column remembers Julian L. Simon, a PhD business economist. Simon is famous (or maybe infamous) for being ‘The Doomslayer’ because he devoted his life to counter the purveyors of doom and gloom who bemoan global deterioration from overpopulation and resource drains.

Simon, who held a PhD in business economics from the University of Chicago and was Professor of Business Administration at the University of Maryland until his death in 1998, challenged the...

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