Personal experience and workplace examples of management technology in business

Management and technology are opposite sides of the same coin essential in the operating and maintaining a business. Today's society, companies must have the proper mix of these two elements to operate effectively. However, good companies do not forget their most important commodity, which is the human capital. Unfortunately, too often this is the forgotten commodity. Technology changes, but people in many ways remain the same. The author found this out personally in a work experience selling Google online ad word ads that led to their being dismissed. While this did not reflect directly on the employer, it does illustrate how events that are sometimes beyond the employer or the employee's control can affect the delicate balance between people and technology in the workplace.

Analysis

Any good manager will confirm the need for the latest technology balanced by the best leadership. This balance makes for the best opportunity to improve their business and increase revenues. However, when the company's business outsourced to India, the balance that had been working for over 10 years evaporated overnight.

It has become a common joke now that many customer service, sales and other white collar jobs have been outsourced to India and other countries where colonies of English speakers work for a fraction of what an American worker does. The name of the company in New Delhi that was the catalyst for our company pink slips escapes this author. However, even now, companies such as India Outsourcing Inc. run ads on freelancing websites like ODesk that handle the freelance outsourcing of white collar jobs overseas. Now, a decision to cut costs for a manager or a CEO that would have taken months to implement can happen in less than 24 hours. All that is necessary is a bad financial report and that manager can cut his company staff to the bone within 2-3 mouse clicks. Then everyone from the secretary, the IT department, the customer service staff and the sales staff can disappear with pink slips and workers overseas will be doing their tasks half a world away ("India outsourcing inc," 2012).

Thankfully, such schemes are more in the news. With all due respect, this author certainly respects the motivations of the workers in Mumbai or Karachi. They are simply working to support their families. Unfortunately, we were and still are the victims of rich multinational companies that are making a killing by outsourcing American jobs, lowering and keeping everyone's wages down in the process.

When this author's experiences occurred a few years ago, the idea of outsourcing over the Internet (as was the Internet itself) new to out company. However, as costs and competition mounted, the demands to cut costs did as well. Since the company closed down its white collar departments (except for a nucleus of management staff), complaints have arisen as to the quality of the search engine optimization work (SEO) that the company is now farming out. The many issue is communicating with staff, whose accents are heavy and English is not their native language. His is happening in many other companies as well, along with other quality concerns as our poor overseas counterparts are dragooned into learning tasks overnight that we were given several weeks to learn. (Hines, 2012). From research for this essay and anecdotal information from the old company, this author has learned that the call center operations may be moving to the Philippines where there is more of an affinity for U.S. culture due to the islands' colonial history. There, 85% of the graduate students graduate with a huge 85% pool of students speaking American style English with a passable accent ("Philippines jobs are," 2010). The unconfirmed information is that much of the staff in the Cebu call center will made up of American medical students learning at a nearby school who are working part-time for pocket money. Now, the circle of globalization seems to be complete as expatriate Americans are joining peasants in the developing world as jobs are outsourced to more tropical climes for pennies on the dollar.

To be fair, this author's view is very one sided. The situation is more complicated and sometimes ends up creating jobs for Americans in the United States. Supposedly, as the U.S. economy picks up (even due to savings and growth caused by foreign outsourcing, or any other reason) the economy will eventually generate more jobs for American workers. In a an article in Foreign Affairs, Daniel W. Drezner claims that the hysteria is hyped (Drezner, 2004, 22-23).

So far, there are two very opposite opinions that we have seen. First was the opinion of this author where they lost a low level white-collar job due to the miracles of the Internet, routed phone calls and overseas English speakers were the recipient of the largess of a U.S. business. Secondly, There is the opinion of a scholar like Drezner that claims that the fear is hyped. Somewhere in between, there is truth and reality. In a 2007 conference that examined the subject, they concluded. They claim that while the cost-driven focus has called the shots in the past, the increase in calls for mass customization and quality are driving for an increase in the quality of the work that is being done in these centers and for a halt to playing to the bottom dollar. Quality is increasing in certain instances overseas. Also, there is a backlash against businesses in the United States whose quality (especially in the area of customer service) have suffered due to the outsourcing due to native language differences and accents (Holman, Batt & Holtgrewe, 2007, 44-45).

While there are "tricks" available to get around some of the problems spoken of above with outsourcing of white-collar jobs overseas (such as hiring U.S. expatriate college students or English speakers in the Philippines with less of an accent), the consumer is getting smart to what is going on. They not only want reasonable costs, but also quality. As the study indicates, the scale may be tipping back in the favor of the U.S. worker in typical market fashion as market theory would predict.