Ethics in Outsourcing Jobs

Outsourcing is the delegation of tasks or jobs from internal production to an external entity (such as a subcontractor). Most recently, it has come to mean the elimination of in house staff to staff overseas, where salaries are markedly lower. It became a popular buzzword in business and management in the 1990's.

Outsourcing is a legal business activity affecting America, and it is an inevitable response to globalization--international trade. Outsourcing occurs when a business purchases services or products from a foreign supplier or manufacturer, or when a business pays another company to provide services that a business might otherwise have employed its own staff to perform. Businesses outsource for the purpose of cutting costs and raising profits. The origin of outsourcing in America dates back to the 1970's, when IBM developed the IT industry in India. Later, the Internet and telecommunications boom encouraged outsourcing as a means of promoting capitalism (Sinnett, 2006).

This practice became even more popular after the dot.com crash of 2000. As many businesses struggled with cash-flow problems, many investors were leery in

investing money in high-tech companies, which many felt were still vulnerable to the dot.com effect. Struggling to do more with less, companies looked for less expensive avenues of development and support. For the United States, India seemed like a perfect resource for these needs since most nationals spoke English. A company can hire an engineer in India, for example, for $10,000 a year where an equally qualified engineer in the U.S. could cost $60,000-$90,000 a year.

In practice, this trend has experienced mixed results. Some companies, which were required to hire offshore talent by investors, reported many communication barriers and high foreign personnel turnover rates. They would often ask for one thing, but be delivered a different item. A domestic correspondent may have dealt with a foreign counterpart for weeks, only to find he had left the previous day (with no notice) and was replaced with another individual, who would then need to be briefed on the current development and projects. Several companies also complained of the low quality of the work produced by Indian development teams (Byrne, 2005).

Reaction by some US customers has also been negative. Many customers of Dell complained of the inability to effectively communicate with their support staff, which Dell outsourced to India, because of their heavy Indian accents. Due to negative customer reaction and negative publicity, Dell moved some of its tech phone support jobs back to the US, most notably for corporate customers, though they stated they still plan to augment their Indian staff.

However, the industries that embraced outsourcing were not equipped to deal with the repercussions of outsourcing, and its effect on the American populace, and economy.

The backlash of outsourcing experienced in America is highly debatable because of our moral responsibility to adhere to a system of values in society, and to promote human development. Advancing capitalism, by cutting costs and increasing profits, comes at a cost to society when moral standards and values are neglected. Workers lose the ...