Ruminations about offshoring

Discussions about outsourcing technical communication come up frequently in Society for Technical Communication events. Everyone "knows" someone who has lost a job due to outsourcing or has worked with an outsourcer or has provided outsourcing services. Where technical communicators stand on the topic generally has much to do with their own personal experience of outsourcing.

Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon. "Contractor" used to imply something less than "employee." A fellow contractor once referred to a group of us -- most ungraciously -- as "high tech prostitutes," the implication being that a contractor would do anything for money. I was offended by the remark. I would have characterized it differently: contractors tend to be willing to do what it takes to get the job and to get the job done.

As a natural progression of globalization, outsourcing has moved to offshoring (outsourcing that moves certain functions to another country). 'High tech' has outsourced and offshored functions like translation and quality process auditing to Canada and Ireland for decades. Perhaps because these functions were new (quality systems) or required expertise not available en masse (translations) in the United States, the popular reception of this type of offshoring generally was not particularly negative. Now, with more mainstream and traditional functions being offshored, offshoring is again getting media attention. Outsourcing, it seems, has gone mainstream.

Information technology support, call center support, software development, technical communication, and popular media reporting that previously was performed domestically is being offshored to skilled workers in India, Eastern Europe, China, and elsewhere. The company where I work is an international telecom developer that has grown largely through acquisition, with two of the divisions acquired in two different countries. Further, we use an outsourcing consultancy that often uses the more recent outsourcing method of "onshoring" (using workers in rural and other lower-paying areas).

Because it is on the minds and lips of my fellow technical communicators and my coworkers, outsourcing, offshoring, and onshoring picque my interest. I am particularly interested in different perceptions of these phenomena and intend to review how popular media as well as certain trade articles talk about them. If I can obtain IRB approval in time for this initial microstudy, I will also review discussion list posts on the topic from STC and techcomm lists that originate both domestically and abroad. To get at the meaning of the text, I will do text analysis of the metaphors and other rhetorical language that is used, analyzing the sources and the results to determine what patterns emerge. Although I have some notions of what I will find in this research, the rapid and widespread expansion of outsourcing in its many forms as well as the explosion of international collaborative teams may be changing how these phenomena are perceived.