Exporting US Engineering Labor Overseas, an Ethical Perspective Essay e

Exporting US Engineering Labor Overseas, an Ethical Perspective Introduction The recent trend of outsourcing white collar jobs overseas to countries such as India has angered many American Technology professionals. This is occurring specifically in areas such as computer software, chip design and technical support. This trend has contributed to the increasing difficulty many Americans, who are looking for technical jobs, are experiencing. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether this anti-outsourcing attitude has any moral basis and to discuss the conflict of interests involved. This trend has a huge number of stakeholders, impacting engineers working for US companies as well as the entire economies of the US and the nations who benefit from the practice. The consequences of this trend are newly established markets and improved standard of living in other countries at the expense of technical professionals in the United States and other countries with established technology industries. History of Overseas Outsourcing Outsourcing is defined as services provided for a company by a secondary company that would otherwise be supplied internally. The purpose of this is process is to reduce costs by subcontracting the work to an external company which can provide the service at a lower cost. In addition to lower cost, the benefits also include more predictable costs. This allows companies to concentrate on their core business. This system is advantageous to the secondary external company because they can achieve the benefits of the economics of scales in performing the same specialized work for many companies. Additionally the company can provide lower costs for a service if they can find lower labor costs. Duri... ...; I.B.M. Explores Shift of Some Jobs Overseas.† New York Times Late Edition – Final, Section C, Page1, Column 2. July 22, 2003. Country Profile: India. TechRepublic, 11/18/03, < http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6298-1029727-4.html> Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2003 McLaughlin, Laurianne. "An Eye on India: Outsourcing Debate Continues." IEEE Software, IEEE Computer Society. May/June 2003. Bardhan, Ashok Deo, and Kroll, Cynthia A. "The New Wave of Outsourcing." Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. University of California, Berkeley. Fall 2003. 11/18/03, <http://repositories.cdlib.org/iber/fcreue/reports/1103/> Breslin, David A. "On the Ethics of Outsourcing," PM, November - December 1999. 11/19/03, <http://www.dau.mil/pubs/pm/pmpdf99/breslind.pdf> Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523)