In the Economist last week (‘Manager, offshore thyself’) was the tale of offshoring a company’s HQ. Cited in the article was the example of Nokia, who have splintered its top ranks to different locations – four of the eleven senior management making their way to New York to tackle the potentials in the convergent mobile market – and presumably a few staying in native Finland . Another example came from IBM ’s chief procurement officer, John Paterson, who has moved to China – the first time a company-wide function at the firm has been based outside America .

Across at the BBC they ran the story of Halliburton’s move from Texas to Dubai – a move some say might result in the loss of power and status of the HQ – but clearly, in this case, the result of some valuable contracts won in Iraq and extensive operations located in Saudi Arabia. (Also see 'Barclays planning Dutch HQ move').

In essence, companies make these moves to be amongst the action and to help expand the business. Usually with clearly defined goals.

The Economist quotes some unnamed academics in Sweden and Britain that suggest the corporate HQ is becoming ever more mobile – “23 firms in the Fortune 500 have moved their head offices from one country to another, more than half of them in the past five years”.

So are these examples the result of the tectonic shifts a company has to make to be competitive; the movements of a minority of organisations, or is the virtual HQ now a reality?

My own opinion is we may be some way off the virtual HQ. Whilst it sounds great and in smaller companies, like ours, a virtual office can be achievable. Hiring staff, planning, administration, strategy and general dealmaking are big nuts to crack. Achieving these core ambitions and competences across larger organisations with decentralized management will be no mean feat.

But what about today’s techno-ambidextrous departments, people and resources? Well, yes, true. As we all know companies do hive off important areas of the business to offshore locations with success. But at the end of the day business is people, managers like to be near each other, bosses near investors and people need community. Competitiveness is all very well but if it leads to state of anomie in your workforce it will, in the long term, bring benefits to no one. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes you just can’t beat speaking to someone in person.

So is offshoring the HQ even a phenomena? Well according to research, and not much of it has been done, there are indications many organisations are increasingly flexible on the location of their functions – but this isn’t really news. In relation to the HQ pulling up the foundations at the moment there’s some, but little evidence of a mass exodus. However what is evident, regardless of my flippant comments, is technology is providing the platforms for such moves to be made increasingly simple in future. For Mr. Paterson of IBM that means already you can run global operations from anywhere in the world. I have to say that’s great news if you have the infrastructure, but I might be a little less confident of some of the places I’ve visited.