Sunday, July 24, 2005
Out Sourced
Continuing my line on creativity I want to talk about out sourcing and creativity, without getting into the political morass of economics, job losses, career gains, and whatnot.
One of the things today's companies like to tout when they out source jobs to an over seas company is the notion they are keeping the move advanced and creative jobs here in the States. This is likely a true statement. The jobs that go over seas are those requiring rote process. While some jobs over seas do require significant creativity, these people doing the more creative tasks are generally working one products for their home market. Does out sourcing rote tasks to over seas locations really increase the creative content of the home office? This is the question I pose.
I have no way to measure this right now, but my guess is that out sourcing rote tasks, even some engineering and computer science type jobs, over seas does not help to increase the creativity of the people in the home office. I find it much more likely that the overall creativity of the company and the creativity of the home branch both drop. The increases in communication barriers -- like time and language differences -- will have a total negative effect on creativity. When the work is out sourced it isn't like the work and the interactions required to do that work just disappear. That work must still happen, and now the people in the home office must take their time and mental energy to coordinated this new style of interactions.
People have likely already published on this topic but I hope to find out more. I am guessing the issues I have lined out above are just short-term issues. Once companies and people learn how to manage these issues the creativity might level out or even go up if they can learn how to use these new over seas people properly. The world economy should also improve with this type of out sourcing if it actually works like big business thinks it will. Over the long-term, the poorer nations start moving away from manufacturing and start doing more service work. The bottom level, rote service work moves over seas and companies push colleges and universities to generate graduates with higher levels of creativity and ability to work with global teams.
One of the things today's companies like to tout when they out source jobs to an over seas company is the notion they are keeping the move advanced and creative jobs here in the States. This is likely a true statement. The jobs that go over seas are those requiring rote process. While some jobs over seas do require significant creativity, these people doing the more creative tasks are generally working one products for their home market. Does out sourcing rote tasks to over seas locations really increase the creative content of the home office? This is the question I pose.
I have no way to measure this right now, but my guess is that out sourcing rote tasks, even some engineering and computer science type jobs, over seas does not help to increase the creativity of the people in the home office. I find it much more likely that the overall creativity of the company and the creativity of the home branch both drop. The increases in communication barriers -- like time and language differences -- will have a total negative effect on creativity. When the work is out sourced it isn't like the work and the interactions required to do that work just disappear. That work must still happen, and now the people in the home office must take their time and mental energy to coordinated this new style of interactions.
People have likely already published on this topic but I hope to find out more. I am guessing the issues I have lined out above are just short-term issues. Once companies and people learn how to manage these issues the creativity might level out or even go up if they can learn how to use these new over seas people properly. The world economy should also improve with this type of out sourcing if it actually works like big business thinks it will. Over the long-term, the poorer nations start moving away from manufacturing and start doing more service work. The bottom level, rote service work moves over seas and companies push colleges and universities to generate graduates with higher levels of creativity and ability to work with global teams.
# posted by chilort @ 11:00 AM 
