Outsourcing Jobs to Foreign Countries - Essay Example

Noted scholar and business visionary, James Brian Quinn of Dartmouth College, has described outsourcing "one of the greatest organizational and industry structure moves of the century." (Quinn, 1994) Several largest and most successful organizations OF United States are also the world's top providers of outsourcing services. Organizations like ARAMARK, Delphi, EDS, General Electric, IBM, IKON, Unisys, UPS, Xerox, and many others have millions of human resources in their outsourcing businesses.

As management expert Peter Drucker articulates, "If you ask me what is the fastest growing industry in United States- it's outsourcing." (Bahli, 2003, p-214) Far from being bad for businesses or their workers, outsourcing is one of the most important and powerful forces available for building successful organizations, creating economic growth, and generating and enhancing jobs. Outsourcing first came to prominence in the early 1990s at a time when the U. S. economy faced a severe recession and the very competitiveness of its businesses was in question.

Organizations used outsourcing then to help streamline their operations and to regain their competitive strength. The result was an unprecedented period of economic growth during the latter half of the 1990s. As one enters the mid-2000s, today's challenges may be even more pressing than those of a decade ago. It's hard to think our jobs are moving to other countries and there is nothing we can do. While outsourcing is a big profit for business owners, American workers and their families are the ones who suffer.

The most common definition of outsourcing includes turning over a firm or business operations, network operations, software development and maintenance or other IT functions to a provider for a specified time, or generally a few years; sometimes profit can become a major factor and outsourcing becomes permanent. Outsourcing can be between two or more companies in the United States or it can be between the United States and other countries. Another term we use is off shoring, in the U.S. we use this term to specifically refer to outsourcing to other country (Ramanugan and Sandhya, 2003).

These terms are used interchangeably and continue to be throughout this research study. Companies in America offshore outsourcing to many countries such as: ChinaIndiaKoreaMexicoPhilippines MalaysiaRussiaAccording to Ramanujan and Sandhya (2006, p.2) "China and India are the two major recipients of outsource work and these countries turn out millions of high-end, college-educated workers, who are well motivated and who make much lower salaries for doing those jobs than their counterparts in the west".

So can you "imagine" these people have all the right tools to take our jobs and keep them; not saying we don't need our jobs but Americans just cannot accept any salary, the cost of living is too high. They also states "if you are a secretary or file clerk, if you work in the mail room, or as a middle manager, bank teller, librarian, if you are in any sectors of the retail or whole sale, chances are your jobs will not be here five years from now". What is driving the IT and other jobs offshore Well the labor cost is the primary