Offshore Outsourcing: Good or Evil?

Economic experts have noticed a trend in certain industries in recent

years – there is an increasing number of businesses hiring workers in

foreign lands, especially India and other Asian nations, to perform work

that has traditionally been done by Americans. This trend had been

particularly noticeable in the field of information technology, where most

analysts believe salaries have been negatively impacted by this practice,

known as “offshoring” (“Offshoring Eats”). Since information technology

lies at the heart of business in the modern world and plays an integral part

in most scientific research and technological innovation, any development

that affects information technology as deeply as the growing offshoring

movement deserves attention.

It should be noted that offshoring is often treated as synonymous with

outsourcing; however, these two methods of increasing a business’s

productivity are not necessarily the same. Outsourcing occurs when a

business pays another business or individual – sometimes called a vendor

or subcontractor – to perform work that is important to the operation of the

first business. For example, a computer manufacturer may hire an outside

programmer or group of programmers to write special software for a new

line of computers. Obviously these programmers may reside in the same

country as the computer manufacturer, or they may live overseas. In the

latter case, their employment by the manufacturer is called offshoring or

offshore outsourcing. Offshoring is not always a form of outsourcing,

however; for example, the abovementioned computer manufacturer could

build a plant in a foreign country and hire local residents to work in it as

regular employees. In this case, the company is ...

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