Talk:Outsourcing

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Outsourcing page needs a complete rewrite. Please contribute...[edit]

There seems to be a lot of misinformation on this page. I have a PhD in business and the textbooks disagree with a lot of the wiki content on outsourcing.

Outsourcing is not offshoring. Outsourcing is domestic only. Offshoring is foreign only. The confusion between these terms was caused in the first place by putting false information about outsourcing on the internet.

  • This is incorrect. Outsourcing relates to buying the services from a third party and may or may not involve off-shoring. Most global outsourcing deals done today have an element of off-shoring.--80.169.239.21 (talk) 09:32, 17 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, PhD is wrong. Outsourcing is work being done outside the company and the term has nothing to do with where it is being done. Outsourcing can be done in your own building, so long that it is another company being contracted to do it.68.183.56.209 (talk) 17:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Please rewrite this page and agree on a proper definition. I already wasted my time editing the page to help improve the content and someone didn't like that I removed the misinformation about offshoring and added a proper definition. Whoever is attempting to control the editing of this page seems to be overly biased by "public opinion", which is completely subjective and false. Outsourcing has nothing to do with sending jobs overseas. 75.15.241.137 (talk) 18:32, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Offshore outsourcing has everything to do with sending jobs overseas.McGlockin (talk) 19:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, outsourcing is defined as sending jobs to a third party, which can be DOMESTIC or FOREIGN.--Bcookiecook (talk) 18:26, 21 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect from Computer services[edit]

Why does a Wikipedia search for computer services direct to the page for Outsourcing? Not all computer services are outsourced. There should be a separate page for computer services, but I would like to learn the history behind why computer services was directed to Outsourcing. As a reference, Computer services is listed as one of several "Industries" associated with Information technology, one of which may be Outsourcing, however, this is not universally true. Araffals 17:52, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it was pointed there after a very old redirect discussion in 2004. I've changed Computer services to redirect to Information technology, as this seems closer to how the term is actually being used in other articles. --McGeddon (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Causes of outsourcing section[edit]

Why is there no causes of outsourcing section? McGlockin (talk) 19:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No-one has written one, feel free to be bold and do so. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 12:41, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

External links[edit]

I've removed most of the external links. The majority were brief news articles which should be integrated as sources if they appear at all. The EL section is not a holding are for sources. I've added the DMOZ link instead, though it is somewhat one-sided and I would not be averse to simply removing all external links but Wiktionary. I did leave in the Towers Perrin report since it looks somewhat scholarly, but it's a private company's report from 2008 and the company itself may be a proponent of outsourcing because it provides said services. Only one of the below seems possibly appropriate, the list of videos from the Cato Institute, if the page was directly linked to rather than linking to a massive dump of conferences. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 12:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Forbes magazine article on outsourcing, pretty close to an opinion piece - basically a couple short interviews.
This is actually a redirect to a Cato Institute publication [1]. Could be a source, but it's not a good EL.
This is a book review, not even the book itself. It might be appropriate as a source for some basic information that doesn't require a high quality reference.
Brief article on legal outsourcing.
Slightly longer article on legal outsourcing.
Another brief article on legal outsourcing.
A fourth and also quite brief article on legal outsourcing.
Long list of conferences offered by the Cato Institute again, the meaningful page would be this one from 2004. Contains a list of videos from a 2004 conference on the topic. This one I could see integrating, though you have to download the videos to use them. Cato is pretty partisan, but it'd be a counterpoint to the anti- sentiment that's ubiquitous on many pages.
Short video on outsourcing from a company that provides outsourcing services that appears to be little more than advertising.
Two minute CNN interview with a guy who owns a company who outsources. Brief, somewhat tangential, essentially a single person's opinion.


The problem with many of these articles is that they tend to be biased opinion. Therefore, most articles can not be used as credible sources.

what happenning[edit]

I tried to add some info about outsourcing according to the industry like BPO / KPO/ s/w ; but it was removed ? Do you want full rewriting of page at once. I was thinking to rewright it step by step . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ankitcktd (talk • contribs) 10:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pages like like [2] which you added in this edit are not usable as references. Please read Wikipedia's guidelines on reliable sources and no original research. – Pnm (talk) 14:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Additions:

I intend to take the reasons behind outsourcing and rewrite them in more of a formal matter, such as paragraphs with the information describing the reasoning. Also I will explain the difference between outsourcing (while implementing the correct definition of outsourcing) and off shoring as it was mentioned earlier in this talk page because it seems to be two seperate ideas that continue to be mistaken as the same idea.--Bcookiecook (talk) 14:57, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am doing a project and i decided to do outsourcing. I plan on giving a better explanation as to what outsourcing is and why corporations/firms choose to outsource. I could use some suggestions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pnarvaez25 (talk • contribs) 20:11, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quality[edit]

In Reasons I want to remove

  • Foreign countries tend to have workers who will complete the same amount of work as in the United States, but for less than half the salary that an American employee will make [9]. This motivates companies to outsource overseas to find foreign workers who are willing to work for these lower wages. The company can spend up to half the usual cost to train these workers to become experts in a different country [10].
  • Comparing the costs to employing a worker in the United States to a worker in China, it is noticed that an employer in the U.S. has to pay higher taxes (social security, Medicare, safety protection (OSHA regulations) and also FICA (taxes))[11].

because of poor content. --Tom1492 (talk) 13:08, 16 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Gloabalize[edit]

The article seems to me to represent outsourcing from the point of view of the US and EU. Why does the opening only reference awareness of the term in the US? Most of the effects of outsourcing are given exclusively from the POV of 1st world countries' governments, workers, businesses. The article could really use about a section on India, China, etc. Forbes72 (talk) 05:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merger complete[edit]

  checkY Merger complete. All information from Co-sourcing has been merged into this article. Northamerica1000(talk) 17:22, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merger complete[edit]

  checkY Merger complete. A merge tag was added to rural outsourcing, but no discussion was initiated. However, the following comment was left at Talk:Rural outsourcing:

Definitely reads like ad copy Lori (talk) 12:57, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I also noted that the text read like an advertisement and there were five "references", one was 404 not found and the rest were just going to the home page of outsourcing companies. So I redirected the article to here. WTF? (talk) 03:06, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge of business process outsourcing[edit]

It has been proposed to merge Business process outsourcing into this article. I don't think this should be merged - the topic is separate enough to merit it's own article. HEre's one article that elaborates on the differences: [3] --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:05, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Do Not Merge: Business process outsourcing is quite different than IT Outsourcing. Some of the larger players do both. If you look closely the leaders in each area are quite different. BPO outsources an actual business process. ITO can outsource technology that covers just a part of one or many business functions. www.linkedin.com/pub/david-lung/1/853/791/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.76.234.201 (talk) 16:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: consensus seems to be to not merge here. However, we still need to do work on differentiating the articles. As it stands, the ledes are similar still.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:41, 22 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This Trash[edit]

This is a large article, and this is the worst written large article I have ever seen. It seems like the entire, overly long article is written by the same person, some dummy who just uploaded his entire crap term paper to Wikipedia. There are many sections and many points of view that simply don't belong. The term "welfare state" needn't appear in an article about outsourcing. Here's an example of the most atrocious writing on Wiki:

"The most recent trends in outsourcing and offshoring have been precisely the opposite force as companies are drifting back to perform tasks themselves and develop facilities back in their home Western locations.

Many firms are undoing their steps in outsourcing because the consequences were not entirely as expected. The circumstances which allow firms to unbundle the different tasks or stages of its manufacturing process into different locations have not been fully determined. Though the nature of the tasks plays a role determining their interconnectedness, other factors such as innovation in the manufacturing process or advances in transport and communication technology also affect the need for direct contact among employees. As the process which ties tasks together within firms remains unclear, there is a degree of uncertainty about which tasks need to remain geographically clustered together. In many cases firms took risks experimenting with outsourcing while lacking a firm understanding of the relationship among internal tasks and its spatial implications."

This is complete garbage that needs to be deleted and started again from a stub.68.183.56.209 (talk) 17:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Algocracy[edit]

"Recently, a study has identified an additional system of governance, termed algocracy, that appears to govern global software projects alongside bureaucratic and market-based mechanisms." (sec 2.7, 2nd par) I am wondering if algocracy is better expressed as a theory of A. Aneesh, instead of as the resultant findings of a study? ColinBlm (talk) 07:59, 27 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

weasely intro[edit]

An editor keeps adding "Outsourcing often refers to" replacing the definitive "Outsourcing is...". The reason given is that "other" things are outsourced but these other things are not explained leaving the reader with a weasely unexplained definition of the topic. Bhny (talk) 17:07, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Accuracy trumps the use of "weasel words". Implying that outsourcing is only a business process is inaccurate. The statement cannot be made.--BPearlz (talk) 02:20, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I've attempted to compromise by prefixing "In business" to give the topic definition some focus. I still have no idea how an organizational function differs from a business process. Wouldn't anything that a business does be a process? Bhny (talk) 20:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not all organizations are businesses and not all outsourcing is business related, so the first sentence does not make sense.--BPearlz (talk) 02:20, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup tags[edit]

@Eric0928: I'm somewhat confused by these cleanup tags that you added to this article. Can you suggest any specific improvements that this article might need? Jarble (talk) 02:26, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Gambling image[edit]

So, to my reading, the image of a card table, and certainly the caption "the gambling of outsourcing" sounds decidedly negative, as in "outsourcing is a gamble". I removed it. @Djm-leighpark: you reverted that with the edit summary, "Restoring the picture. Not regarded as highly opinionaed. Removal is opinionated." I'm not sure what you meant by "removal is opinionated"? I'm also not sure what this photo is trying to illustrate; it shows a booth for an outsourcing company, but it's unclear that company has anything to do with gambling, so it seems like an odd choice. What are your thoughts? -- Beland (talk) 23:23, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Beland: The outsourcing company at at outsourcing fair/exhibition illustrated they were prepared to assure savings with 10 months ... as a selling point; implying that such saving were not always achieved. The image has been in place almost 3 months at circa 30,000 hits a months and this is the only challenge; so I think its a fair image unless consensus determines otherwise or agrees a re-caption. If the article were improved it would likely be better moved to a section ... possibly some derivation of Counterwave outsourcing ... but placing the image there would not currently be constructive. Reviewing the article one analysis might be the implications section seems to have undue weight with the introduction of the overview section having lost its way. The article level tagging and frequent re-dating is a disincentive to article improvement; whereas the tag for outsourcing models improvement looks reasonable. As a quick fix I'd be inclined to move Implications to a sub article so the main article could look to being more positive then use outsourcing for dummies (I and my libraries dont have a copy and I'm not buying one) or a similar book or two. The problem is I'm time limited and mostly focused on anti content destruction at the moment.Djm-leighpark (talk) 11:00, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty of incorrect or opinionated content stays in Wikipedia articles for years without challenge; neglect doesn't make it correct or neutral. I don't read the phrase "the gamble of outsourcing", which is in the image caption as neutral. It implies that outsourcing is risky, and companies should think twice before doing it. This might be true, but Wikipedia shouldn't have an opinion on that. I also don't find the caption accurate - this is a picture of an outsourcing company in the gambling industry, not a booth set up to illustrate that outsourcing is a gamble that might succeed or fail. That's taking the pictured situation out of context, and if feels like the purpose of doing that is to support an opinion in a sort of ironic way that makes outsourcing companies look bad. -- Beland (talk) 08:41, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've moved the image to issues out of lede but I'll consider changing the caption and perhaps it is more related to reducing the risks of using outsourcing and actually relates more to the earlier section. I've moved the article to a section when article improvement has made that possible. Thankyou.Djm-leighpark (talk) 08:50, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Econmics, Trade, sourcing[edit]

A tag that was placed on this article, whose details are

This article needs attention from an expert in Economics or Trade. Please add a reason or a talk parameter to this template to explain the issue with the article. WikiProject Economics or WikiProject Trade may be able to help recruit an expert. (June 2018)

It was placed over half a year ago, and no details were supplied. Having made extensive edits, including citations from economists, I'm removing the tag.

This article is not meant to be at the PhD level, nor is it meant to be about unemployment. Now the word unemployment only appears five times, two from a NYTimes financial writer. Pi314m (talk) 02:21, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

PhD clarification[edit]

The ref to PhD was not a light "doesn't take a brain surgeon/rocket scientist." A Samuelson/eco-class student should easily be able to understand most of the article; that was my goal. Pi314m (talk) 16:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Expanding the section on issues in Outsourcing[edit]

I am a co-author of a large report on the challenges and issues in outsourcing. We asked several dozen CTOs (Chief technology officer) from all over the world about their experience and on the basis of this research, we prepared a broad study.

The report can be found here: https://asperbrothers.com/ebooks/Software-Outsourcing-Guide.pdf

On the basis of this report, I would like to propose some changes in the section of issues in outsourcing. What our survey respondents said was about several aspects:

- The problem with communication and distance - even if we live in times of technological possibilities, CTOs say that sometimes a face-to-face conversation is much more effective than teleconferences. Additionally, there is a problem with not getting to know the members of the team you work with, which limits good cooperation.

- The problem with cultural differences - here the phenomenon is particularly important when companies outsource processes between distant countries or even continents. Companies have different organizational cultures, which causes problems.

- The issue with understanding the goals of the project and its course - it happens that despite the best intentions, the company performing the order is not able to understand the whole background and achievements of the company it works for, which means providing the service in a lower quality.

I would like to put similar things in the issues section of this entry, do you think it will be useful? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Inter AS22 (talk • contribs) 15:11, 28 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are 3 sections with the word ISSUES:
  • Usability issues in offshore development
  • Legal issues
  • Issues and reversals
to which of these do you wish to add material? Pi314m (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Outstaffing[edit]

{{OTRS pending|day=11|month=August|year=2021}} I'd like to suggest to add a section about outstaffing at the Terminology section, since this is a different method to outsourcing, in my opinion. {{subst:Ebroersma1984}}

"Management Services Organization" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Management Services Organization and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 27#Management Services Organization until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 12:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ItelCX[edit]

User ItelCX, whose "promotional" ID is blocked, made 5 edits, addings 3,747 bytes. One was reverted. Three edits were to Outsourcing. Some NYTimes material does support the idea that Outsourcing to the Caribbeans deserves to be mentioned in this article, albeit with sourcing. Nuts240 (talk) 07:54, 1 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal: Backsourcing[edit]

There is a limited amount to be said about backsourcing which is distinct from talking about outsourcing itself - I would like to suggest the material in that current brief article could sensibly be transferred here. BobKilcoyne (talk) 04:19, 27 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  checkY Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 16:09, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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