policy

Where GE goes, will others follow?

This morning's announcement that General Electric will sell a 60% majority stake in its global outsourcing business speaks volumes about the future of offshoring.

GE was one of the early American companies to tap India's outsourcing potential. But the outsourcing unit limited its service to GE and its customers.

That restriction no longer need apply now that General Atlantic Partners and Oak Hill Capital Partners are paying $500 million for a majority ownership position in GE Capital International Services. Should they choose, the new equity owners can now widen the scope of the business to contract with any … Read more

Dell and the definition of "is"

Dell CEO Kevin Rollins came out swinging against overseas outsourcing in a speech delivered Friday at a conference sponsored by Forrester Research in Boston. For the folks at Dell, who delight in tweaking IBM and Hewlett-Packard, the occasion provided Rollins with a bully pulpit from which he could draw invidious comparisons with his major rivals.

Both IBM and HP are big foreign outsourcers and have taken their PR lumps accordingly. But methinks Rollins was stretching the truth when he suggested Dell was following a different path. Fact is that the company has long had factories and support centers in other … Read more

Whose job is most vulnerable?

The Dallas Morning News carries the findings of a new study listing the occupations most vulnerable to being outsourced.

"Myths and Realities of Globalization," compiled by Lori Kletzer of the economics department at the University of California at Santa Cruz, concludes that the least vulnerable professions are in building maintenance; health-care support; education and libraries; construction and extraction; and transportation.

The positions most likely to get hit by overseas outsourcing? Military services; farm, fish and forestry; computers and mathematics; life, physical and social sciences; legal; and architecture and engineering.

Out of sight, out of mind?

(This went up today as my regular Friday column on News.com)

I had been spending a lot of time thinking about the future of offshore outsourcing when one Yuta Tabuse turned up on my personal radar.

For those of you who are not hoops fanatics, Tabuse is a 5-foot-9-inch reserve who plays for the Phoenix Suns. Tabuse also happens to be the first Japanese national to make the roster of a National Basketball Association club.

As a fellow 5-foot-9er, I'm pulling for the diminutive point guard, though it makes no difference whether Tabuse goes down in NBA annals … Read more

India sees offshoring controversy dying down

The blue states may be gnashing their collective teeth in anguish but business reaction in India to George Bush's re-election has been nothing short of ecstatic.

With John Kerry out of the picture, the Indian consensus is that the prevailing trade winds (political, of course) out of the United States aren't likely to dramatically shift when it comes to overseas outsourcing. Kiran Karnik, president of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies disclosed at a New Dehli press conference on Thursday that some technology firms have been slow to sign or announce deals with local firms … Read more

An outsourcing parable

Jack McHugh, a legislative analyst at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, offers a primer on how to tally up the costs and benefits of outsourcing. Interesting take, though he makes no bones about his opposition to any restrictions on the uninterrupted global flow of labor and trade.

Bush and offshoring: Now what?

Will George Bush's reelection make any difference to the future of offshore outsourcing? Probably not. While the Bush administration has followed a fairly protectionist policy during its first term it has been viewed as friendly to free-traders.

Would John Kerry have done significantly more to protect jobs -- to the point where the government put roadblocks in the way of U.S. corporations seeking to transfer jobs across the ocean? Again, not likely. Kerry paid lip service to shore up support from organized labor but he wasn't going to do anything radical. The presidential campaign debate was defined … Read more

India: The newest "red" state?

With Americans lining up at the polls today, newspaper reports out of India show strong corporate support for George Bush's re-election. Democratic challenger John Kerry is viewed with some suspicion by the Indian business community because of his sharp criticism of offshoring.

The local correspondent for Agence France Press quotes Amit Verma, an economist at the Confederation of Indian Industry, saying that Bush's "return to power would be good for India as he is for outsourcing to low-cost countries like India."

Business sentiment on the sub-continent notwithstanding, the votes of Indian Americans remain up for grabs … Read more

Outsourcing and its misunderstandings

Benjamin Gruenbaum, a senior in Cornell's School of Industrial Labor Relations, has penned a thoughtful essay called OUTSOURCING: Bad for the Economy or Misunderstood Phenomenon? for the Cornell Daily Sun.