Outsourcing: Threat or Opportunity?
by Joan Marques
Published
on this site: March 25th, 2004
In the past few months concerns about outsourcing have surged
to truly vexing proportions in almost all sectors of the U.S. corporate
world. In a recent edition of the Wall street Journal, Maher (2004a)
presents a statement by John McCarthy, vice president of Forrester
Research Inc., who estimates that “as many as 588,000 U.S.
white-collar jobs will be ‘off-shored’ by 2005 -- and
a total of 1.6 million by 2010” (p. B1).
While in the not so far past mainly lower level jobs were exported
to countries offering low labor costs, today every profession is
in jeopardy, even the jobs of accountants, analysts, tax-professionals,
architects, attorneys, radiologists, or technical writers, to name
a few. The idea of telecommuting has expanded: the positive sound
that this job flexibility tool used to have is not so positive anymore.
Once upon a fairly recent time, telecommuting was perceived as a
way to keep good workers active by accommodating them through working
from home. However, this phenomenon has now expanded to a scale
where workers don’t just work from their home in the next street,
neighborhood, or town, but in the next continent as well!
The telecommuting shift has, thus, resulted in an elevation of
the education levels of jobs that are crossing borders. So, what
does the picture look like today? No matter whether you are a worker
at the lowest echelon of an organization, or a top performer with
an advanced degree, your job can be exported next year, next month,
or even next week.
As soon as you find out that the U.S. company you work for has
tested Bangalorian, Coimbatorian, or any other transcontinental
waters, you can start counting down. And not even obtaining higher
education will keep your job secure anymore! No wonder that more
and more people get nervous about this whole trend: globalization
was supposed to be a positive development, not a threatening one.
Before offering some positive attitudinal suggestions regarding
outsourcing, here is a point to ponder: long before this trend became
a reason for concern in the industrialized world, globalization
was a nightmare to the lesser-developed, smaller-scale producing
countries of this world. For the longest time these countries were
beleaguered by mass production from their industrialized “brothers
and sisters,” who could afford infinitely cheaper and larger
scale production due to their massive and advanced setups. Becoming
a partner in a regional trade community simply meant more prosperity
for the prosperous, and more poverty for the poor. Borders had to
be unlocked for giants who could now freely expand their state of
the art services to neighbors who were still struggling with old-fashioned
production processes and meager performance levels.
And now these “poor” countries are finally gradually
emerging from their
desolation: they offer their services on-location and through the
Internet to corporations from industrialized countries, and obtain
jobs at these corporations for a salary, considerably higher than
what they used to get paid at home, yet significantly lower than
what these corporations would pay to the workers in the industrialized
home country! And that is what this entire outsourcing issue looks
like from the other side of the mirror.
So, now that this has been placed on the table, here are some suggestions
for workers in countries that endure job losses through outsourcing:
- Polish up your entrepreneurial skills. Smaller, lean-and-mean
operations
will have longer endurance than mammoths with little or no flexibility.
“Seek out new possibilities outside your company,” suggests
Maher (2004b, p. B8). This author refers to our human inventiveness
by predicting that the offshoring of jobs will ultimately create
new entrepreneurial opportunities.
Maher cites Bharat Desai, chairman and chief executive of technology
outsourcing company Syntel Inc., who declared, "The more
repetitive jobs will go offshore, because it will be more cost
effective and higher value to do that," (p. B8) This means
that the less repetitive jobs will stay!
- Enlarge your horizons. Try to find out in what other industries
than the
one in which you are currently working your skills can be applied.
Then, familiarize yourself with the wheelings and dealings of
that industry, just in case…
- Engage in some in-depth self-exploration in order to find out
what other
work-preferences you have. Then, see what you can do to increase
your capabilities in those other areas as well. The more diverse
your skills, the greater your applicability in the rapid changing
global work environment.
- Read! Listen! Surf the Net! Travel! Do everything you can to
familiarize
yourself with other environments than the one you are currently
in. It may sound like an unrealistic, even silly suggestion, but
think of all the people who have changed environments in the past
for their betterment. If they could do it, you can too. If the
world is becoming a global village, and we are all becoming “citizens
of the world,” we may as well get ourselves comfortable in
our new, enlarged “home,” right? Besides, even if you
don’t want to go anywhere, it is always a plus to at least
know what’s going on out there.
Here are, at the end of this little contemplation, two positive
notes to boost motivation:
- Threats can be seen as opportunities. And people are generally
known for
their resilience in turbulent times. In a recent Fortune article
the following statement was posted: "One of the greatest
assets of America, so underestimated there but so attractive to
outsiders, is the ability of the U.S. to compete and come out
on top, yet to absorb periodic shocks. I don't feel America is
going to lose its economic dominance in any manner"
(“Outrage Over Outsourcing,” 2004, p. 32).
- Even outsourcing and the entire trend of globalization have
their
limitations. As Maher (2004a) puts it: “Geographic and cultural
differences can make it hard for overseas workers to take over
highly sophisticated jobs” (Maher, 2004a, p. B1).
In conclusion: Whether we choose to perceive outsourcing as a threat
or an opportunity depends on our mindset, our actions, and most
of all: our approach. As one of the four noble truths in Buddha’s
teaching tells us, “As we are the ultimate cause of our difficulties,
we are also the solution. We cannot change the things that happen
to us, but we can change our responses” (“The four noble,”
¶4).
References:
Anonymous. (2004, March 22). Outrage Over Outsourcing. Fortune,
149, 32.
Maher, K. (2004a, March 23). Next on the Outsourcing List; Job
Shift to Cheaper Countries Could Threaten More Careers: Analysts,
Architects, Attorneys. The Wall Street Journal, pp. B1.
Maher, K. (2004b, Mar. 23). What to Do if You Fear Your Job May
Go Abroad.
Wall Street Journal, pp. B8.
Unknown. the four noble truths. FWBO.org. Retrieved on March 24,
2004, from http://www.fwbo.org/fournobletruths.html
Joan Marques, Burbank, March 24, 2004
Joan Marques emigrated from Suriname, South America, to California,
U.S., in 1998. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership,
a Master’s in Business Administration, and is currently a university
instructor in Business and Management in Burbank, California. You
may visit her web sites at http://www.joanmarques.com
and http://www.spiritcounts.com.
Joan's manual "Feel Good About Yourself," a six part series
to get you over the bumps in life and onto success, can be purchased
and downloaded at:
http://www.non-books.com/FeelGoodSeries.html.
|
