According to the article “Restoring American Competitiveness” by Gary P. Pisano and Willy C. Shih, the United States industries have worn down competition through the damages from outsourcing manufacturing. There are several issues that have caused serious problems to the U.S. economy, which have caused the decline of trade due to shortage of innovation and competition. Theses problems are lack of funding for research and development by government and businesses and poor financial decisions made by management for outsourcing. There are several recommendations that the government and business executives can do to rebuild U.S. industries.
The U.S. industries have been outsourcing manufacturing for several decades now. U.S. companies thought they were reducing costs by outsourcing development, manufacturing, and process-engineering abilities. Consequently, U.S. corporations’ knowledge, skilled workers, and supply chain, which are the necessities to producing advanced products, have vanished. For example, almost all notebook computers, cell phones, and handheld devices, which were once created in the U.S., are now designed in Asia. When a major U.S. company outsource, it pressures their rivals to do the same thing. They also lose the expertise of process engineering, which would interact with manufacturing on a daily basis. Minor companies and skilled workers go to where the jobs and knowledge networks are no matter where they are geographically in the world. This decline of trade in the U.S. has caused a negative chain reaction to their suppliers of sophisticated materials, tools, production equipment, and components. U.S. industries do not have a way of coming up with new ideas for the next generation of high-tech products...
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...tly governing its scientific and technological company successfully to gain a competitive advantage. These recommendations will help U.S. businesses to rebuild the competitive advantage they once had.
This article revealed how outsourcing manufacturing damaged U.S. industries’ competitiveness and innovative abilities. There were several problems that affected the U.S. economy, like the decline of trade, lack of research and development funding, and poor managerial decisions. Several government and businesses’ recommendations were made to restore U.S. industries’ competitiveness and innovative capabilities. Simply by restoring U.S. innovative abilities will the industrial commons bounce back and there will be economic growth.
Works Cited
Pisano, Gary P., Shih, Willy C. (2009, July-August). Restoring American Competitiveness.
Harvard Business Review, 114-125.
Offshoring American jobs have positive and negative consequences to the American community. Some of those consequences of offshoring American jobs include Amer...
“5 Facts About Overseas Outsourcing.” Center for American Progress, Center for American Progress, 9 July 2012,
For advocates of global business, the hope is that outsourcing will help lift the United State’s economic growth and development by lowering the input cost of services (i.e. labor and materials) and by opening new markets abroad. Mainstream economists believe that outsourcing will have ...
This report is extremely credible and qualified, as it was written by an author who is well-versed on the topic. The author was also the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, making him even more authentic source. Throughout the article, the author discusses and examines the words of two other authors, Ron and Anil Hira, who are experts on the subject of American Outsourcing. These authors are also very credible; one is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is a professor at Simon Fraser University. Additionally, the author refers to many case studies that were taken at different universities in order to justify his claims on why American Outsourcing is bad. The intended audience is
Outsourcing provides products we may lack the resources to produce in America. We could buy technology that hasn 't been developed yet, or services our nation does not offer. But in excess outsourcing will cause more problems than benefits. In Michael Dennis Scott 's book Scott on Outsourcing: Law and Practice Dennis evaluates the trouble it takes to have a successful outsourcing contract. He points out that “the parties must continually work to ensure that the relationship continues in a mutually satisfactory manner” to be successful in the long term. For outsourcing to work both parties must be very flexible as unexpected circumstances are likely to emerge. When outsourcer relationships go wrong a huge number of problems could occur. One major risk is that there is a risk of losing confidential data to partner, this could hurt the business greatly and cause safety concerns for the company. Also the products may take much longer than anticipated to be produced and arrive since many outsourcers may have several partners. There also may be hidden legal problems and costs if the partnership contract isn 't reviewed in depth and conditions are left undefined. There is also the major risk of the other business going bankrupt, if this happens the financial loss to American companies could be out of
Outsourcing occurs when products or services are obtained by an outside supplier (Vonderembse & White, 2013). Companies may decide to outsource if it can be obtained less expensively due to specialization or the other company may have proprietary technology that gives them a competitive advantage (Vonderembse & White, 2013). This paper will analyze trade-offs for productivity improvements, discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of global sourcing versus producing in the United States, recommend a low labor cost country based on inputs, trade-offs and global advantages and give an example of a product of the specific country.
Do you ever wonder what our nations underlying focus is? The answer is simple and should be fairly easy to guess… Money! Outsourcing originated from someone coming up with the idea that we can make products for practically nothing in other countries and make very high profits. Although it seems like a great idea to businesses, it negatively affects our country. American consumers are buying these products that are made in other countries and the companies profits are continuing to rapidly increase. At the same time, people that are in the production field of work in America are losing their jobs because producers would rather pay foreign workers to get the job done for a much lower wage. When it comes down to it, one of the reasons our economy is suffering is because of outsourcing. Basically, it all comes down to money. The consumers don’t pay close enough attention to where the products are made. Therefore, consumers are spending extra money and are causing outsourcing to thrive. The lack of knowledge Americans have on the subject of consumers affecting outsourcing is leading our country to economic stress but if we begin to recognize the issue, the jobs we could potentially save may be our own.
Outsourcing is when a company or business decides to contract part of their services that they do not do well to an outside company. There is two types of outsourcing offshoring and nearshoring. Offshoring is where a company outsources abroad and, nearshoring is outsourcing within the home country. The reasons that a company decides to outsource varies from company to company but, the most common ones are cost reduction, increasing globalization, growth , tax incentives, government support and access to new markets. However there are some key challenges that come with offshoring and those key challenges are quality and labor retention. ( Bacon, 2007 p 38-39). Asian outsourcing began as early as the 1960’s (Espana 2013 p 3). Some people argue that offshoring is good for the economy even though it’s a well know fact that offshoring has a negative effect on the economy, there is wage differences and the unemployment rate increase.
The issue on outsourcing jobs is not only jobs being taken away from Americans but its hurting our economy. There are many other smaller issues that are created when jobs are outsourced. Items such as containers that the items are shipped in, it is cheaper to build a new container where the item is being built than it is to ship the empty container back. That creates a smaller issue of having thousands of unused containers lying around. (Winkipeida, 2013)
Outsourcing has become a very popular issue, and it has reached an all-time climax. Firms are starting to do this a lot more than than in the previous decade. What is outsourcing? Outsourcing is defined as “The procuring of services or products, such as the parts used in manufacturing a motor vehicle, from an outside supplier or manufacturer in order to cut costs.” And it has become a big issue in our country. There are thousands of articles and books written on it, and you can attend numerous classes and speeches on the subject. The use of outsourcing is quite simple really… Either pay an American worker $15 an hour, or pay someone in India to do the same job for $2 an hour. There are lots of other advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing but I will address those later in the essay. So what does an average American really know about outsourcing? Most people would say sending our jobs to another country in order to save money isn’t justified. It would cost a lot of people jobs, which would send them into distress and possibly debt. But that’s not the whole story behind outsourcing. People hear about outsourcing and automatically decide that it is bad for our economy. What about the good things that outsourcing brings to our economy? We are sending jobs to India, their consumers will start making more money, and in return buy more of our goods and services. In this essay I will show you both points of the debate and you can decide for yourself whether or not outsourcing is bad for our country.
The common reason given by US companies for outsourcing India is high quality and low cost. However, there is criticism that perceived job losses in the US is due to outsourcing and something has to be done to prevent jobs from disappearing to India.
Outsourcing is a subject in which there is a lot to analyze a talk about. There is many issues which are currently in the air and which are still being debated and will probably be debated for the next few years. What we conclude based on these presented issues is that everything will always have negatives and positives. I think that America should closely look and try to figure something out that will satisfy its own people and not just leave as it is. They should realize that not having enough jobs, or keep making loose jobs is not un answer. It looks like it might be getting worse and worse.
The problems of outsourcing are it has immediate and constant affect on the unemployment ra...
Without any action taken to reduce outsourcing, economic growth within America will continue to slow down due to decreased jobs and lowered job openings. “Many experienced IT workers in developed countries have been laid off when companies turned their outsourcing needs to overseas service providers” (Shao, 2007). Along with that, many support jobs that IT jobs helped sustain (such as those in human resources and sales) have also been lost (Shao, 2007). These jobs have simply moved outside the country to increase profits for companies. But with the introduction of a tax on profits made through outsourcing, these outsourced jobs can be reduced and brought back into the nation. Additionally, outsourced jobs from the manufacturing field continue
One effect of companies’ use of offshore outsourcing is that it fuels business competition, and business competition is good. It is important because it gives one company an edge over another. According to Winston Pepito nowadays if companies do not use outsourcing they will lose ground against the competition (Pepito). If we look at figure one on the previous page we can see this by examining an illustrator’s depiction of offshore outsourcing. This clever illustration suggests that if a company does not use offshore outsourcing that company may fail. This is noted by the personified factory holding a sign that says, “China or bust.” Winston Pepito writes that some say outsourcing helps companies stay in business while others say it is a “disease” ruining the lives of American workers (Pepito). However, it is more important that businesses stay competitive than losing a few low-end jobs in America. Cyber Futuristics claims that competition forces a business to improve the quality of their products or services as well as provide them for cheaper prices (Cyber Futuristics). The fact...