\r\n\r\n

If $2 is a princely sum in Brownpeepulistan...

\r\n\r\n

...it matters not one jot what it's worth in the USA.

\r\n\r\n

Oh yes it does, for foreign exchange rates, and what the USA Corporation pays. It matters very much, you've said so yourself as you said it saves the USA Corps money. Hence that point of it not mattering what it is worth in the USA is moot.

Of course, since the context of the original discussion of the value of two bucks had to do with what the workers needed to live on, your point is irrelevant to the original point. Don't be so ethnocentric.

\r\n\r\n

Corporatism is what made the USA (and Western Europe, and Japan, and Australia) what it is today. Problem is, corporatism - transglobal corporatism - eats its young, to whit: you.

\r\n\r\n

Invalid term, Capitalism/Consumerism made the USA, etc what it is today. Labor helped to create that capital. The labor is paid money to help grow the economy by consuming things. Hence you have consumerism, cut out the consumer by sending their jobs to another country, and you have damaged the USA Economy. This is the start of a downward spiral as money is no longer in the hands of the consumer, which used to provide the labor. Three guesses what that does to the USA economy? So what happens when the top 10% of the economy has the wealth/capital and the other 90% does not? See where this is going? The only reason for past sucess of Capitalism was due to consumers consuming, getting money into the hands of the people. Hence Capitalism/Consumerism is what made the USA, etc what it is today. No point there as your point is invalid.

\r\n\r\n

Understand this: all that matters is the bottom line, and if it's legal (or even probably legal) it's ethical.

\r\n\r\n

If all that matters is the bottom line, then I guess the USA Corps are ignoring labor laws, their code of ethics, and other laws, and doing what they can to boost money for the company? If so, this is not only unethical, it is illegal. In this situation you end up with an evil corporation that will get caught eventually. Once again, an invalid point. Also something could be legal but unethical, I already covered that. That was the first thing we learned in Business Management, taking the same classes I am taking would show you that. What you are talking about is Classical Management which is a dinosaur that is going away and being replaced by Organizational Management. You need to update your information.

Try applying those lessons in the Real World, and see how far it takes you. Also, you're making a bad assumption: that this is something that can be fixed by process (classical vs. organisational management). It's not. It's a problem with the people in the bureaucratic structure, not the structure itself. This is a problem that's going to require a generational change, and that's a ways off yet.

<snip>

These books talk about team work, empowerment, mentoring, leadership, total quality management, facilitation, developing a code of ethics and sticking to it, etc. The bottom line is not always about how much money an organization can make, one has to look at the bigger picture. If all an organization cared about was money, they would eventually go out of business by ignoring the other aspects of the business.

Actually, the problem is not necessarily management (or not only management). Part of the problem is ownership. If you as a manager sacrifice some dough to realise other social goals, the owners will take your job away from you. It might take some time, but it will happen.

In the "good old days", most owners (ie- capitalists) lived and worked in the same community as their factory. This meant they couldn't ignore the common weal for too long, as eventually the locals would have a necktie party for them if they did. However, when the owner (say, shareholder in Nike) is a third of the world away in one direction or the other from the factory (NA or Western Europe to Indonesia) you don't have to worry about the Indonesians taking your head off, because they can't get to you. It's also a lot easier to ignore some of the more obvious societal ills associated with your business when it's safely out of sight. For example, I saw a picture once of what had happened to the children of a woman who'd been trying to organise a union at a factory in Indonesia. They killed them in front of her by "removing the lower jawbones of the children with a machete" before they killed her. There were three of them, and they ranged in ages from four to eight. The factory was in needle trade; undoubtedly there are many thousands of garments made in that factory circulating in the West.

Globalization is not an easy thing to master, there are many barriers one must overcome. You just learned that the USA has a different definition of secular than the UK has, imagine what else is different? One has to overcome language, cultural, religious, and governmental issues before doing a sucessful global business, most USA Businesses are not prepared for this. Just because people speak the same language does not necessarily mean that these issues are automatically dealt with.

Actually, most transnational corporations originated in the US. For the sake of clarity: a multinational corporation has operations in many countries, while a transnational corporation is owned in many companies. The difference is patterns of operation vs. patterns of ownership. Once a firm has become transnational, it will no longer feel any loyalty to its country of origin, as the owners will have many different national loyalties. Instead, history seems to be showing that such firms end up transferring all their loyalty to the almighty buck.

Take for example a Help Desk in India, almost everyone I've spoken to who has called a Help Desk that is based in India has told me about their poor communication, lack of understanding, lack of quality, etc. Is Dell, HP, etc really better off by using cheaper labor? I say this because when they start losing customers or customers do not return to buy newer products, how are they going to make any money?

I would imagine they'll do it by selling computers. They might be pissing off various people, but that doesn't seem to be affecting their sales too much, does it?

Speaking about the Bottom Line:

[link|http://www.ovum.com/go/content/c,39608|http://www.ovum.com/go/content/c,39608]

\r\n\r\n

When any investment is not delivering a sufficient economic return to your organisation you should be looking at more than reducing its cost, you should be questioning its fundamental value. If it turns out to have less value than you forecast for it, then you may have the option of cutting it out altogether.

\r\n\r\n

Of course you can\ufffdt even start this exercise until you start measuring the economic returns as well as the costs of IT. Simply passing chunks of your business to India or Russia will not resolve any underlying value issues that your organisation may have. It will simply shift those issues further away from the core of your business, and may ultimately make them even more difficult to resolve.

\r\n\r\n

Consider that it might be making things more difficult to resolve. Which in turn can come back and bite the USA Company later.

OTOH, it might save them a boatload of dough, permitting them to realise a greater ROI, which will make their owners happy. This is a Might Be; not a great way to run an analysis. Let me put it another way: if you tell an owner "We might find it creates some customer issues if we do this, but we'll save X million dollars a year in labour costs, which should result in a 5% increase in your annual dividend," what do you think said stockholder is going to say?

I submit to you that Offshoring may have hidden costs and may not be cheaper than hiring USA Citizens:

Or it may not. That has to be examined on a case by case basis. Sweeping generalisations in one way or another are equally invalid.

It just boggles the mind that the USA Corporations did little to no research over the effect that Offshoring will have on their business. Hence you can now see why your points are either invalid or moot.

The fact that some management didn't do their due diligence doesn't have anything to do with Peter's point. Some companies didn't do their research... and others did. That's irrelevant to Peter's point. Peter's point is that expecting a massive bureaucracy like a major transnational to behave in any way other than maximising profit is like expecting a block of lead to float.

In the final analysis, this is a cultural problem. YOU might think that way, MOST AMERICANS might think that way, but neither you nor most of your fellow citizens have any influence on how these decisions are made. What do you think is the inevitable result when most people don't vote? When most of those that do vote vote the way they're told to by TV? The inevitable result is the guy with the most money wins, not the guy with the good ideas. Since all that money comes from transnational corporations (which have no intrinsic loyalty to neither any nation nor any governmental system), the people that DO make those decisions are going to make the decisions they're paid to make so that they too can keep their jobs.