{"id":427,"date":"2010-04-15T08:03:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T12:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eprup.com\/ica\/?p=427"},"modified":"2023-06-14T04:49:47","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T08:49:47","slug":"a-new-avatar-of-outsourcing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.icainstitute.org\/opeds\/a-new-avatar-of-outsourcing\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Avatar of Outsourcing"},"content":{"rendered":"
Recent trends suggest a new wave of outsourcing opportunities that Americans may end up falling in love with. The \u201cGlobal Outsourcing 2020\u201d event co-organized by the ICA Institute in Atlanta spurs this debate on \u201cReverse Outsourcing\u201d.<\/p>\n
A janitor in an empty American office answers a phone call: \u201cI\u2019m the only one left. They have outsourced…everyone else\u201d. This is a snapshot from a series of cartoons that two University of Missouri professors analyzed in their research (2009) titled \u201cFunny Business: Public Opinion of Outsourcing…\u201d What started as a cost- cutting measure by US companies during Y2K era later became a hot topic of discussion in several disciplines including Information Systems, Business, Policy and Political science. While \u201coutsourcing\u201d and \u201c off-shoring\u201d created immense job opportunities in emerging economies (India and China) in particular, they also became huge socio-economic issues for Americans.<\/p>\n
Several experts argued that companies that outsource for short-term goals are short of vision. These arguments strengthened with increased service costs of the outsourcing companies. Simpsons and other American satires vehemently reflected the public sentiments about outsourcing by showing the menaces of job-losses, poor customer- care service and communication (language\/accent) issues.<\/p>\n
In the meanwhile, the \u201c outsourcing\u201d companies kept expanding: in size, revenue, geographic foot-print, and product breadth & depth. With time, outsourcing seems to have become an integral part of the global business environment. Have a look at the Google Search Volume Index for the keyword \u201coutsourcing\u201d [Fig-I]. With time, the interest about outsourcing seems to have gone down. Now, look at the historical stock price trends of top Indian IT-off shoring companies [Fig-II] which tell an entirely opposite story. Surprised to see the contradiction? Don\u2019t be. The anomaly is, perhaps, because outsourcing has become so integral to business-processes that people are not much amused by this concept any more. A similar contradiction lies in the Google Search Volume Index for the term \u201cReverse Outsourcing\u201d [Fig-III]. As the curiosity about \u201coutsourcing\u201d decreases, internet-surfers worldwide have been showing greater interest in learning about \u201cReverse Outsourcing\u201d.<\/p>\n