Английский для экономистов и менеджеров. Ульянова О.В - 70 стр.

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linked to the Internet.
c. Business between companies will increasingly be done through the Inter-
net.
THE E-LANCE ECONOMY
Despite the wave of big mergers and acquisitions over the past few
years, the days of the big corporation – as we know it – are numbered. Be-
cause modern communications technology makes decentralized organizations
possible, control is being passed down the line to workers at many different
levels, or outsourced to external companies. In fact, we are moving towards
what can be called an 'e-lance economy', which will be characterized by
shifting coalitions of freelancers and small firms using the Internet for much
of their work.
Twenty-five years ago, one in five US workers was employed by one
of the top 500 companies. Today, the ratio has dropped to fewer than own in
ten. Large companies are far less vertically integrated than they were in the
past and rely more and more on outside suppliers to produce components and
provide services, with a consequent reduction in the size of their workforce.
At the same time, decisions within large corporations are increasingly
being pushed to lower levels. Workers are rewarded not for carrying out or-
ders efficiently, but for working out what needs to be done and doing it.
Many large industrial companies – ABB and BP Amoco are among the most
prominent – have broken themselves up into numerous independent units
that transact business with one another almost as if they were separate com-
panies.
What underlies this trend? The answer lies in the basic economics of or-
ganizations. Business organizations are, in essence, mechanisms for co-
ordination, and the form they take is strongly affected by the co-ordination
technologies available. When it is cheaper to conduct transactions inter-
nally, with other parts of the same company, organizations grow larger, but
when it is cheaper to conduct them externally, with independent entities in
the open market, organizations stay small or shrink.
The co-ordination technologies of the industrial era – the train and the
telegraph, the car and the telephone, the mainframe computer and the fax ma-
chine – made transactions within the company not only possible but advan-
tageous. Companies were able to manage large organizations centrally, which
provided them with economies of scale in manufacturing, marketing, distri-
bution and other activities. Big was good.
But with the introduction of powerful personal computers and electronic
networks – the co-ordination technologies of the 21st century – the eco-
nomic equation changes. Because information can be shared instantly and

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