Offshore Outsourcing
Currently, it has been reported that many of our jobs, as much as one out of every three private-sector jobs are being sent overseas.
What is offshore outsourcing?
Outsourcing occurs when a firm subcontracts a business function to an outside supplier. Outsourcing is mainly the result of companies who will always pursue the lowest-cost structure, which means less skilled work will move out of the U.S. to emerging economies.
Many believes that this is a good thing, because living standards around the world will rise, and workers in developing nations will get new and higher-paying jobs, and consumers in the U.S. will be able to buy products that are cheaper than if they were made at home.
This paints a scenario where everyone seems to be at the winning end right?
This expansion of labor has provoked many controversial debates questioning whether sending so many American jobs overseas is healthy for our economy.
One side of the argument is that with the sudden increase in outsourcing high-technology and professional jobs, that we may be in danger of being on the fast-track to becoming a third world country and that our position in the world as the lead economic power might be in jeopardy.
On the other side, people are arguing that even though offshore outsourcing forces our economy to suffer job losses that it is only temporary and that the long term benefits will outweigh the short term suffering.
The question is, just how serious for America, its’ workforce, and its economy is the shift?
Many supporters for outsourcing defends the process, optimistic, referring to two decades ago, during the loss of auto jobs and other high-paying manufacturing jobs wh...
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...hat this will help create win-win solutions and ensure that everyone benefits from a more competitive and healthier global economy.
Bibliography
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Johnson, Mike. Outsourcing in brief. 1997
Raynor, William. Outsourcing Jobs Off-Shore: Short and Long-Term Consequences. 2003. The State University of New York.
http://www.newwork.com/Pages/Opinion/Raynor/Outsourcing%20Consequences.html
Kling, Arnold. Please, Outsource to My Daughter.2003. TCS: Tech Central Station.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/071403D.html
Steidtmann, Carl. The Macro-Economic Case For Outsourcing.2003. A Deloitte Research Economic Brief. http://www.dc.com/research
McKinsey Global Institute. Offshoring: Is It a Win-Win Game? 2004.
http://www.mckinsey.com/knowledge/mgi/reports/offshore.asp
http://www.rppi.org/offshoringwinwin.shtml
Offshoring American jobs have positive and negative consequences to the American community. Some of those consequences of offshoring American jobs include Amer...
Outsourcing simply means acquiring services from an external organization instead of using internal resources (Butler, 2000). By using outsourced resources, organizations can gain a competitive advantage by utilizing contingent staff to accomplish strategic goals without incurring the fixed overhead. By focusing on the leading edge and highly specialized skill sets, outsourcing providers can often offer higher quality services, or at a lower price than the client organization. Typical reasons for outsourcing go beyond simple contingent staffing. Outsourcing providers are able to maintain economies of scale with regard to specialization (...
Mankiw and Swagel (2006) argue outsourcing is not as large a phenomenon as the media describes. Their research indicates outsourcing accounts for very little of job loss in the United States, nor has it made a distinct contribution to the slow rebound of the labor market. They go on to propose that increased overseas employment has actually contributed to higher employment in parent United States companies. They reported that while 30,000 jobs were lost per month in 2004, two million job changes per month were happening as well. They reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics when they report that in 2015 there are expected to be 3.4 million jobs outsourced, but 160 million jobs gained here in the United States. They also claim that there is a rise in net US income by 12-14 cents per dollar of outso...
Both sides can agree that outsourcing can be desirable for a business do to the potential profit. It allows goods to be made cheaper, management to run smoother, and money to be made faster (Salanţă 270). Both sides can also agree, however, that U.S. jobs are lost as a result of outsourcing (Ahmed 192), as well as environmental damage being cause due to corporations taking advantage of loose environmental regulations (Marquis 39). Upon digging deeper into this debate, one can find that both sides present very convincing arguments.
Outsourcing emerged on the financial arena during the 1980s and has since then been spreading. Outsourcing production was furthered with the process of globalization which provided a new component leading to the strengthening of resources, skill and labor specializations across the world. The process of outsourcing is using the skill and abilities of a third-party to accommodate society on the foundation of labor. As stated earlier, it was during the 1980s that the process kicked off mainly due to the efforts of corporations when they began to hire labor forces across the world. Even though outsourcing has come out from its developing stages, there are still following effects on the US economy.
As the problem of job outsourcing becomes more of an issue in politics, elected officials like the President and Congress will no longer be able to ignore the dilemma. The war in Iraq has been at the forefront of the presidential race but the importance of outsourcing American jobs seems to have been slightly overshadowed. If the issue of outsourcing is not watched carefully and a definitive plan hammered out, a trickling down of negative effects may occur within the U.S. economy. However, there is a polarized opinion on the effects of this “phenomenon”.
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...
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.
Kibbe, C. (2004, 07 09). Outsourcing: the good, the bad and the inevitable. New Hampshire Business Review, pp. 1A-21A.
There are over 13.7 million cancer survivors in the US today, and over 1.5 million people will be newly diagnosed this year. Over the last several years that has been substantial progress in cancer treatments resulting in increased life expectancy. While certainly desirable, the dynamic has changed to more people are now living with cancer as a chronic illness. All of these individuals face a series of complex decisions related to their care that include screenings, treatment choices, and the financial challenges of cancer care. Yet less than one third of all people facing cancer receive appropriate counseling and support. A 2008 Institute of Medicine (US) Committee noted that: “The remarkable advances in biomedical care for cancer have not been matched by achievements in providing high-quality care for the psychological and social effects of cancer. Numerous cancer survivors and their caregivers report that cancer care providers did not understand their psychosocial needs, failed to recognize and adequately address depression and other symptoms of stress, were unaware of or did not refer them to available resources, and generally did not consider psychosocial support to be an integral part of quality cancer care.” (Institute of Medicine 2008)
North, W. K. (2011). Leadership styles impact staff retention, morale. Clinical Trials Administrator, 9(8), 89-90. Retrieved from EBSCO host
Outsourcing has been around for many years. In this paper I will discuss some of the history of outsourcing, the goods things about outsourcing, and the bad things about outsourcing.
We say that we are heading toward a more global economy because of the fact that competition in today’s markets is global. This means that corporations in the United States can compete in foreign markets and vice versa, therefore U.S. corporations and foreign corporations become interdependent and thrive off each other. This can have a good impact on the United States because it allows U.S. corporations to seek materials and labor outside of the U.S. in countries such as China, India, and Mexico, where workers are paid a lot less money than U.S. workers, thus allowing them to sell their products for significantly cheaper than if they were produced in the U.S.; however, the tradeoff is that many American workers in the industrial sector lose jobs due to this shift of labor to overseas. In the long run this will be beneficial for the U.S. and although some percentage of workers are losing work, new jobs in the services sector, in fields such as computer technology, telecommunications, and language skills are opening up and experiencing growth because of this change.
Outsourcing is a technique for companies to reassign specific responsibilities to external entities. There are several motivations for outsourcing including organizational, improvement, cost, and revenue advantages (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008).
People need to get educated about the great impact that offshore outsourcing has on an economy. The global economy has started to thrive and offshore outsourcing has profited the consumers as companies want to cut costs and competition, which is why I support offshore outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. What does it mean to offshore outsource? Let’s first start by explaining what outsourcing means. The basic meaning of outsourcing is to obtain goods or services from an outside source.