The importance of relationships in business is a fundamental belief of PSL and has been mine for many years. Each time one discusses the subject with organisations there seems to be acknowledgement of the principle. Yet frequently for many organisations the issue of relationship management is low on their development programmes.

The trend towards outsourcing, alliances and networks means that the external organisations are in reality moving inside another organisations imaginary boundaries or firewalls to become part of the overall delivery process. However their remote location means that they are not however physically absorbing the ethos or culture of the host client. In some cases they may be operating with a completely different set of conflicting values. Thus the outside is coming inside but is frequently still evaluated on the basis of traditional command and control thinking.

The Outside In Theory poses the question that when we assess the importance and value of relationships should we be evaluating from another perspective. If organisations looked at their operations from the perspective of outside in then the realisation is that perhaps managing relationships is a more complex and crucial ingredient for outsourcing to be successful.