Outsourcing has been so much in the news for the last
decade, usually demonized as the business that stole our business. This book
portrays it as not only a major change in the labor market, but also a change
to profits. The concept of having a popular US product, such as Nike footwear,
manufactured in Asia can also be a way to subliminally advertise it in that
continent. The same would hold true if NBA shirts were manufactured in Nigeria.
Dell Computers are used as an example in the book for the
outsourcing of administration, not just manufacturing. If payroll recording and
processing are outsourced, the company is no longer responsible for it. For a
huge corporation, payroll can run up a big bill in work hours and effort, but
if you hire another company to handle payroll, you rid yourself of the
responsibility. You’ll cut out the middlemen and have more time for other
things.
The book also covers rubrics and contracts. Everything must
be clearly outlined, and it must be clear, according to the contract, as to who
assume liability. You don’t want to outsource to a company in Bangladesh and
get sued because they used child labor and stole their wages. Delivery of good
requires a contract, because you don’t want to find out at the last minute that
the foreign made Nikes require passive import duty, thanks to a tariff on goods
from that country.
While this book was definitely thorough, I would have like
to see more case studies and examples of outsourcing being used. It’s being
used for computer support services, with great success, and even 30 years ago
it was used by manufacturers who moved some of their factories to Asia.
Outsourcing has spread to other industries, such as medicine, with US citizens
travelling to India for heart surgery and to Thailand for sex changes. There’s
even a scholarship fund that sends minority students from the USA to study medicine
in Cuba. Perhaps we’ll soon see education being outsourced too?
No comments:
Post a Comment