Term Paper on "Future of Outsourcing Information Technology"

Term Paper 16 pages (4450 words) Sources: 10 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Future of Outsourcing Information Technology From the United States

Information technology jobs are amongst those most frequently being outsourced to other countries, especially to third world nations. There is a complex set of reasons behind the outsourcing of these jobs that cannot easily be dissected. This brief study attempts to simplify the overall picture of it outsourcing, and to project the future of outsourcing of it jobs in America.

One of the most hotly debated topics in conversations between Americans today is the outsourcing American information technology jobs to foreign countries. In 2005, journalist John Zaracostas, reporting from Geneva for the Washington Times, advised readers that nearly 250,000 jobs for which Americans had graduated expensive undergraduate education and post graduate educations, expensive investments in the American job markets and careers, would move offshore between 2005 and 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (p. C10). Zaracostas reported, too, that the outsourcing of these highly skilled white collar jobs would likely "fan political sensitivities (p. C10)," meaning that the response of Americans to outsourcing should be a central focus in the campaign for the 2008 Presidential election, and every House of Representatives and Senate seat that comes up for election and re-election. However, as the 2008 presidential election campaigns are drawing to a close, there has really been little discussion as to how any of the candidates would help Americans gain a comfort level that the information technology jobs they trained for, educated themselves for, and have the student loans to show it, will be available to them in the way that these job opportunities and incomes would be save for the fact that the jobs are being outsourced to other countries, especially developing countries. The fact is that skilled American jobs in information technology are being outsourced by private business, states, and the Federal Government as a way to increase corporate bottom lines, to garner favors with foreign governments, self-interest, and in the move towards creating a global economy, which requires bringing developing nations into the competitive and economic folds of that process.

This study attempts to examine outsourcing of it jobs in a way to better understand the impact of that process on Americans; graduates who have invested large sums of money in acquiring and maintaining the technological expertise and information to enter the it market, stay abreast of new technological developments, and to establish careers in their fields of study. In this study, the question that I will attempt to answer is: What is the future of outsourcing it jobs in America mean to Americans?

Literature Review

Ten books and journals have carefully been selected on the basis of their contribution to forming as complete a picture of the future of it outsourcing as possible. Outsourcing is a sensitive subject, politically, economically, and individually for the many people whose lives have been affected by the outsourcing of it jobs. However, outsourcing is also about building a global pathway to economic trade and moving third world nations into the economic zone towards sustained economic independence. Today, the United States contributes billions of dollars in foreign aid to impoverished nations. Any step away from that source of income as a recurring source of income serves the American taxpayers well.

The books and journals selected for support of the ideas in this paper are used to build here the incremental future of it outsourcing, including that part of the picture that demonstrates how outsourcing has improved the economic conditions of the countries where the work is being outsourced to. The individual works have been selected to include those negative aspects of outsourcing, to demonstrate that where there is a manipulation by governments and business as co-partners in directing the building of a nation's economy, there is often times abuse of power and corruption for personal gain.

The set up in the introduction was well served with the Washington Times article by John Zarocostas, taking figures from a reliable source, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to forecast the number of it jobs that would be moving offshore over the next ten-year period. It is relevant to this paper on the future of it outsourcing in America, because it is consistent with American leaders' move towards globalization. Globalization is something about which the American people have heard very little on from our elected officials, yet something which our elected officials and American businesses and corporations are very much a part of.

So as we look to understand outsourcing, we immediately see that it is tangential to the plan for global economics and balancing the economies of the world in a way that moves impoverished nations out of dependence on U.S. contributions to improve those impoverished conditions. All the while, however, the American taxpayers are going into debt with loans and grants to help third world nations deal with those conditions of hunger, shelter and health care as American jobs are being outsourced to those very countries.

Journalist Brian Farmer, writing for the New American, compliments Zarocostas' lead in, proving a perspective from historical industry trends in business moving offshore since the early 1970s. Farmer works the issue of globalization into the formula of his discussion, which is supportive of the research in this study.

The newspaper and magazines selected for reference in this study are important because they bring to the study the most up-to-date information and public reactions to outsourcing. The newspaper articles are investigative journalism, which means that the journalist has to research and uncover the story that is not otherwise forthcoming, or is perhaps vague. While the journal articles and books are peer reviewed, works written in the last decade just cannot reflect the changes in laws and pending bills introduced into the American Congress. For this reason, in this research study, it is useful to read the newspaper articles for the value of fact that they contribute to the immediate moment as concerns outsourcing.

Thomas J. Allen and Michael C. Scott Morton's (1994) book, Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s: Research Studies, allows for the exploration of the it boom of the 1990s, its relevance to business and corporation, and its meaning as a viable source of economic sustainability.

Other works selected to contribute to the points of the study will be introduced as they come up. These works do not provide the bulk of the study here, but are peripheral in nature that they support my conclusions and suppositions based on my ideas informed by the more prominently cited works.

Information Technology

Understanding what information technology is will serve to inform the reader with information needed to decide whether or not the outsourcing of it jobs from the United States to other countries is reason to be concerned. It will also help to create a picture of how this technology will evolve, and what that evolution in technology means to the United States and the countries targeted for outsourcing. Thomas J. Allen and Michael C. Scott Morton (1994) discuss the information technology revolution of the 1990s in their book, Information Technology and the Corporation of the 1990s.

Information technology has revolutionized business and corporations because it is not an adjunct of doing business or of the individuals conducting business. "No longer will information technology be simply overlaid onto existing business; it will now be used to restructure the enterprise (Allen and Morton, 1994, p. 3)." In other words, now business emanates from within the information technology, outward, reacting to the information through the technology. Allen and Scott cite Charles Jonscher, Chief Executive of the European Trust Company, who contends that the restructuring is occurring between, as well as within corporations (p. 3). Information technology has blurred the lines between the entities and, equally important, customers say Allen and Morton, agreeing with Jonscher (p. 3).

The boundary between customer and supplier is becoming difficult to define as electronic integration blurs the distinction. Within organizations, distinctions between information technology and production technology and between information workers and production workers are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain (p. 3)."

At these levels of corporate functioning, we now understand how information technology revolutionized and transformed the look of corporations and even government, because these same changes took place in government, and, reversely, between consumers and businesses. Jonscher says that electronic communication is the critical path, the life-line of the corporation, and that expansion and growth of business will be at the rate of the ability to communicate information; which we see by technology today, is with lighting speed.

Allen and Morton say, too, that the organization has, and will continue, to restructure itself around the effective use of it (p. 3). Allen and Morton cite Michael J. Piore, saying that:

revolution is taking place in both American managerial practice and technology. Basic structures are changing with the introduction of multiple lines of reporting, team management, parallel decision making, the integration of suppliers and vendors, and attempts to reduce in-process inventory and to introduce new forms of… READ MORE

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