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Paul Strassmann

On Outsourcing and Anorexia Nervosa

"Excellent companies can achieve superior performance without following any standard information technology spending pattern... Only one variable clearly stands out: They don't show any trends toward massive outsourcing... Excellence arises from the way management harmonizes
its resources, which are different for each organization. This is why I believe the current fashion of telling companies what their best-practice indicators should be... has questionable merit."

-- Strassmann, Paul A. (1995, Dec. 18). The Myth of Best Practices. Computerworld, p. 88.

"One could say that outsourcing has many of the attributes of a widely prevailing disorder known as "Anorexia nervosa." It is a psychological disturbance involving the refusal to eat to the point of starvation. People with anorexia have a distorted self-image which makes them feel "fat" even when emaciated. Preoccupation with food and low self-esteem, along with emphatic denial of the problem, characterize most anorexics. Similarly, executives in companies with poor financial performance seem to concentrate on downsizing as the preferred method for restoring competitiveness."

-- Strassmann, Paul A. (1995, Aug. 21). Outsourcing: A Game for Losers. Computerworld, p. 75.

On Outsourcing & Intellectual Capital

"Sourcing amounts to renting the skills and competences of a potential competitor. Renting may appear cheap relative to ownership (and a large mortgage), but the lease may not be renewed or the rent may be dramatically increased. Furthermore, you are accumulating little if any
technological knowledge (equity) and are unlikely to benefit if the skills and competences appreciate in value due to future business opportunities that cannot be clearly foreseen."

-- Bettis, R.A., S.P. Bradley and G. Hamel (1992), "Outsourcing and Industrial Decline,"Academy of Management Executive, 6, 1, 7-22.

Herbert Simon

Of Humans and their 'Central Concerns'?

"A good business novel or business biography is not about business. It is about love, hate, craftsmanship, jealousy, comradeship, ambition, pleasure. These have been, and will continue to be, man's central concerns."

-- Simon, H.A. (1977). The New Science of Management Decision, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, p. 134.