Offshoring And Outsourcing

1347 Words6 Pages
Colorado Technical University Online HRM246-1102-01 Foundations of Human Resource Management 4-9-11 Off-shoring and Outsource Work Let’s first define off-shoring. What is off-shoring? Off-shoring refers to the changing of business functions from one country to another. This could mean relocating operations, product manufacturing or service centers to another country. The reasoning behind this idea of off-shoring is lower the cost of business, usually overseas where the labor costs are considerably lower. Outsourcing involves the practice of paying another company to carry out a task or produce a product that could be made or done by the firm paying. Outsourcing typically is comprised more of coordination and information exchange. Outsourcing is progressively associated more with firms located overseas, due to the salaries being considerably lower. Outsourcing and off-shoring started in the 1960’s and 70”s with the shifting of physical manufacturing processes to areas with lower labor costs. Example: several U.S. companies moved production to factories in Mexico. Later the off-shoring of physical products moved to other countries/locations with lower labor costs such as; China, the Philippines, India and Eastern Europe. 30 to 50 percent decrease in labor costs more than compensated for the increase in transportation, duty, dock and broker costs. Why do companies send work offshore? There are several reasons that these companies send IT work to service providers to other countries: (1) To lower the cost of operations: Due to the pressures of lowering costs and lower labor expenses, service providers in other countries as mentioned above can do the work for less than what the job would cost if done at the original “in house” company could. Example: Each year India has about 3 million college graduates which earn one-tenth to one
Open Document