« Prizes for R&D | Main | The shifting sands of economics »
January 25, 2007
The next wave of outsourcing?
Is Brazil the next wave of outsourcing? It may be according to the Wall Street Journal - Soccer, Samba and Outsourcing?:
With time zones and a culture closer to those of the U.S. than Bangalore or Beijing, small operators such as Mr. Lazarski and multinationals including Accenture Ltd. and IBM are betting that Brazil could quickly become Latin America's major hub for inexpensive corporate support work, and a top-five location world-wide.
But, wait a second. One of the rhetoric points about outsourcing to China and India was all about the time differences. With operations in the US and in Asia a company could run a project 24 hours. IT workers in the US could hand the project off to their Asian counterparts at the end of the day (the beginning of the day over there) and then take it back the next day. This job sharing was said to increase productivity.
I realize that rhetoric generally disappeared awhile ago. But it seems to still linger - including in Washington policy debates. Outsourcing to Brazil should finally kill it off - since this type of outsourcing has nothing what so ever to do with round-the-clock production. It is job competition, not job sharing, plain and simple.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at January 25, 2007 11:48 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.athenaalliance.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1106