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Outsourcing and the Virtual Organization
Outsourcing and the Virtual Organization
Dec 29, 2024 10:52 AM

Author:Jim Durcan

Outsourcing and the Virtual Organization

Increasingly, companies are buying in from outside certain services and functions that would previously have been fulfilled by an internal department or employees. Companies no longer just outsource support functions, but also outsource critical areas of production or design. It lets companies focus on those activities where they have real competitive edge, and is increasingly being seen as an attractive alternative to downsizing or cost-cutting.

Durcan and Oates provide a wide-ranging expert overview of outsourcing, aimed at managers and decision-makers who want to understand fully all the issues involved. How do companies define core and non-core activities? How do you find the best provider of an outsourced function? What are the pitfalls to avoid? How do you monitor the service provider? What is the impact on issues such as corporate security and confidentiality? The authors also consider how outsourcing is redefining the nature of corporations: if companies have minimal physical existence, but exist as a network of relationships and contracts, when should we speak of the 'virtual organisation'?

Reviews

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One of the most honest books I’ve read in a long, long time. Maybe forever.

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Crammed with ideas and rich in the kind of quotations that have a way of giving you a jolt up the spine and lodging themselves in your brain.

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Wonderfully strange and absorbing… Informative, persuasive and great fun for anyone not only with a passing interest in sport but in mankind.

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[Cialdini] argues that the content of an advertisement or selling strategy is less important than the context. You can try to improve your core pitch as much as you like, but if you haven’t paid attention to background circumstances (such as the film people were watching at the time), you won’t get anywhere.

—— Matthew Syed , The Times

Cialdini, author of the best-selling Influence, returns with a book that points out how setting the scene for your audience — “pre-suading” them — is as important as the message itself.

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—— Best Sales and Marketing Book of the Year , Inc.

Builds on [Cialdini's] pioneering text Influence, which was released in 1984 and sold three million copies worldwide . . . Introduces the idea of timing to the ideas of Influence and pushes them into the digital age.

—— Independent

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—— Wall Street Journal

Robert Cialdini is perhaps the foremost expert on effective persuasion . . . The book provides a vast catalogue of research and techniques, many of them marketing related.

—— Harvard Business Review

[Both a] work of cutting-edge scholarship and an insightful guide to the strange working of the human mind, Pre-Suasion packs a good punch for business leaders who want to understand their customers.

—— Belfast Book Review
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