In so many ways the business world is smaller and more accessible in the modern era – a place where even tiny online companies can trade globally, where people travel for work as a matter of routine and where businesses become international by outsourcing tasks across all seven continents.
In the 1980s it was simple: there was little sourced service. Then came the bandwagon and many jumped on, keeping the thinnest retained shell. What are the challenges now as the pendulum of fashion and practice continues to swing?
Trends in the market
University of London Professor David Faulkner has written extensively about the need for cooperative, rather than purely competitive, strategic business relationships and alliances. Since the early 1990s Faulkner has studied the “essence” of competitive strategy, and the challenges involved in integrating cooperation as part of the competitive mindset. One of his books is International Strategic Alliances: Cooperating to Compete (1995). The strategies of cooperation has been his most common theme.
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.
For the most part this series has examined the big thinkers in economics who have influenced the development of modern outsourcing. This week I want to focus on Joseph E. Stiglitz, whose work has the power to influence how companies think about globalisation.
