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Homesourcing to housewives in Salt Lake City
Homesourcing to Salt Lake City and outsourcing to Bangalore were just flip sides of the same coin . . .
[Excerpt from The World Is Flat, Chapter 1, "While I Was Sleeping," p. 36 ff.]
I had heard that JetBlue had outsourced its entire reservation system to housewives in Utah . . . David Neeleman, the founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways Corp., has a name for all this. He calls it "homesourcing." . . .
"We had 250 people in their homes doing reservations at Morris Air," said Neeleman. "They were 30 percent more productive -- they take 30 percent more bookings, by just being happier. They were more loyal and there was less attrition . . .
"We will never outsource to India . . . The quality we can get here is far superior . . . [Employers] are more willing to outsource to India than to their own homes, and I can't understand that. Somehow they think that people need to be sitting in front of them or some boss they have designated. The productivity we get here more than makes up for the India [wage] factor."
A Los Angeles Times story about JetBlue (May 9, 2004) noted that "in 1997, 11.6 million employees of U.S. companies worked from home at least part of the time. Today, that number has soared to 23.5 million -- 16% of the American labor force. (Meanwhile, the ranks of the self-employed, who often work from home, have swelled during the same period -- to 23.4 million from 18 million.) In some eyes, homesourcing and outsourcing aren't so much competing strategies as they are different manifestations of the same thing: a relentless push by corporate America to lower costs and increase efficiency, wherever that may lead."
That is exactly what I was learning on my own travels: Homesourcing to Salt Lake City and outsourcing to Bangalore were just flip sides of the same coin -- sourcing. And the new, new thing, I was also learning, is the degree to which it is now possible for companies and individuals to source work anywhere.
Posted by Martha Rudolph at March 2, 2006 04:55 PM
Comments
How can you describe what was happening "while you were asleep" if you have never awoke?
Friedman's analysis is a reified one, offering little insight into the nature of the processes he claims to unveil. His endorsement of economic "restructuring" (which can be framed differently as "outsourcing") is completely representative of "a mode of unreality" reaching its apex in "globalization" ("3.0" in Friedmanspeak). Molly Ivins labels such endorsements in face of the overwhelming costs our societies pay for economic growth as "the Friedman Problem".
The business press stated quite openly the new strategy of the now transnational corporation back in 1981:
"Transnational companies in this decade face greater risks, more constraints, and new competition from advanced developing countries. In order to survive and grow in this new environment, they are going to have to learn to be adept at tapping new sources of labor, resources, capital, and technology around the globe." (Source: Hefler, Daniel F. (1981). "Global Sourcing: Offshore Investment Strategy for the 1980's", JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STRATEGY, vol. 2 issue 1, p7-13.)
The "neoliberal agenda" is nothing more than a political commitment to a stated business strategy encroaching on the various traditional values of nations around the globe. Friedman propagandizes this strategy as "progress"!
Posted by: Jeremy Honeycutt at April 17, 2006 07:08 AM
There is nothing new about homesourcing. It was a staple of the early industrial revolution, at least in England. During one period in particular, when thread was spun by machine but weaving was done by hand, 'putting-out' merchants delivered the raw materials to the weavers, who spun cloth at home.
It is also generally true that an advance in one area of industry leads to increased use of old technology, at least for a while. More people book flights, but not all of them want to book online. They want to use an old technology, the telephone, to book more flights. Hence the homeworkers who take the increased call load at home. Similar with railroads leading, for a while, to an increased need for horses, and increased use of computers leading to more, not less, paper being printed, at least for a while.
Posted by: LouAnn Blocker at April 17, 2006 05:36 PM