Lesson+5+Evaluate+the+Ethical+and+Social+Issues

The word "outsourcing" makes many employees feel insecure about their job security. We've heard the outrage on TV and seen the headlines in the newspapers, "Outsourcing Steals Americans' Jobs!" And while this is true to some extent, outsourcing jobs also benefits American companies to stay afloat by cutting costs in hopes to reduce prices and increase profits.

At this stage of the project, our research group is only looking for similarities in metrics and pricing. However, by the end of our research if the company can use our findings to determine if the project would be more cost efficient to be done in house or by a third party, this does heighten ethical and social questions.
 * How to maintain fairness to the veteran employees who have been with the company for over twenty years?
 * How can a company be sure the client will receive the same quality of service as the in-house team offers?
 * How likely are the “gain” to offset the company’s image of corporate social responsibility in the media and community?

If the company like XYZ decided to outsource some of its database services to another company, the internal staff could supplement the technical work with monitoring the overall performance and closely monitor how satisfied the system users are with the services they are receiving. This would enable XYZ to further benchmark its database services, not only on the performance level, but also customer satisfaction. The real savings in outsourcing are hard to determine at this point in time. With so little data to work with, one thing is for certain. If XYZ chooses to outsource its database jobs to another company, weather in the United States or overseas, managing the new group of people will require more labor investments. The real issue lies in finding the outsourcer who can match the business needs.

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