ABSTRACT
“Native agents” are especially effective when networking with key individuals during professional gatherings. “Inside agents” may have been bypassed for promotion, feel underpaid and underappreciated, are relegated to insignificant jobs, or are generally pushed aside in a variety of political or power struggles within the organization. They feel abused and see their careers languishing unless they make some bold move. Beyond personal observations, managers would employ inside agents for their expertise in obtaining meaningful information from scientific and professional journals, industry studies, product literature, or innovative projects described in articles and professional papers written by the competitors’ employees. Perhaps the one unsettling issue to cope with when using agents—but certainly worth knowing—is which of managers' employees intentionally or inadvertently passes on their company’s information directly or indirectly to competitors. Eventually, those individuals are exposed, and managers can obtain valuable clues about what motivated them to those acts.
