The mobile society: effects of global sourcing and network organisation

The notion of a mobile society needs to be rooted in the newly emerging forms of business and organisation of the global economy. In this paper we explore the five stages of business focus evolution over the past 50 years, with a special attention paid to the current, the fifth stage. From the given and fixed processes, through their re-engineering and extension to networks, we have moved up to their disaggregation and distribution. This is a remarkable journey in search of competitive advantage and its main acceleration is beginning now. The future of business and entrepreneurship is more remarkable than its recent past. We focus on global sourcing as the main driver of attaining global competitiveness and sustainability. It is becoming the interest of all network participants that their relationships are competitive, sustainable and stable on a global scale. The main point of this paper is that mobile knowledge and learning are brought forth by the underlying global forces of mobile business and society.