Talk:Student Projects:Outsourcing PPF
Thanks for your quick response. My main idea is to work within the basic framework that you guys have already set up- past, present and future. We should look at the history of the rise of corporations, cost accounting, and such and see how that has impacted business decisions in the past. Then we would move into the present- which would include outsourcing (reasons for it, its effect on the economy) and H1B visas (and their impact on the domestic economy). The issue here is, America is sending jobs overseas and it is filling jobs in America with places for visas. This would bring us to the future: our policy suggestion. Here is the fork in the road: we can either say that the best thing for our future would be to continue outsourcing and cut H1B visas or find ways to stop outsourcing and continue H1B visas for the jobs we have here.
We can not take this H1B visa route at all, also. The way I see it though, this gives us a chance to frame a debate and then give our suggestions. In this sense, we are tying together history, the present state of affairs, and then the future- and how we can shape it with our suggestions. Then we would have a perfect three part paper.
How does this sound? Here is the link I posted earlier which is critical of the H1B visa program. http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
Looking over what you guys initially wrote on the site, I think we can add to what I said yesterday. I see that you guys wanted to compare India to the U.S. and address the brain dress issue. Once we take a side on H1B visas, we can see how cutting them off, or letting them continue would impact India. For example, if we say cut H1B visas, then we can see if this will benefit India- since it would keep highly intelligent people there. And the opposite would be, if we are for H1B visas, does the brain drain end up hurting India. I didn't include this yesterday because I wanted to make sure that we didn't over-extend ourselves. But this would keep closer to the original idea you set out.
most of Kiran's post was moved to the Visas page.
and thoughts along those lines.....anyway, we can examine all these in greater detail in the final report. for now, i 'd suggest we all get together to write a really good draft/1-page report which we need to submit by nov 1st, i think.
Brad Struss: There was a study just completed by Seattle University regarding the impact outsourcing has had on companies here in Washington State. The study of ten companies showed that only one company performed laid workers off as a result of hiring outsourced workers. Here's an article in the Seattle Times with more details: http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=outsource21&date=20041021&query=outsourcing (requires users registration)
The complete report is here: http://www.rateconline.org/docs/RATEC%20-SEASIM%20Global%20IT%20Soucing%20Study%20FINAL%20DOC.pdf
I would be interested in participating in this group if there is still space.
David Dorwin wrote:
It took longer than I thought, but I completed importing our emails and discussions to the new Wiki pages. I also added some of my thoughts that I had regarding Kiran?s email. Have a look!
Fantastic job, David!
Andreas: We haven't yet heard from you. Please do make yourself heard, and participate on the Wiki :)
I'll be putting in some additional material sometime tonight. Also, it would be great if we start working towards the 'who does what' part of the project.
Here's what I suggest: (I'll add this to the Wiki later) o David: put outsourcing in context of US politics o Diwaker: case study on the H1-B visa issue o Kiran: analyze outsourcing from an Indian perspective o Stuart: the "past" and "rise" of outsourcing o Andreas: talk to us!
How does that sound?
Cheers! Diwaker
User:kirkal I agree with Diwaker - FANTASTIC job, David!regarding my core area, sounds just fine : possible overlap with David and Diwaker's areas? lets see...it should do for now,though.
cheers, Kiran
Hi,
I was wondering if everyone has their draft ready. I will probably use the paragraph I already have. If I make any changes, I will be sure to do it by tonight, so we can submit it tomorrow. Also, has anyone heard from Andrae? I have not heard from him. I am sending this e-mail to him as well, so I'm hoping he'll speak up!
If anyone is having trouble drafting their part, tell me, and I'll try to help.
Sincerely, Stuart Berkeley '06 USER:S.Schimler
I have made some changes (organizational and outline) to the description page -- I think we shud just add our stuff here and send the link to Tapan:
I'll add my stuff to the present section, including sources where appropriate. Everyone else please do the same. Nope, no news from Andrea yet.
Cheers, Diwaker
Hi. It's Andrae. sorry for the delayed response. I've had a bit of a personal emergency this past week. I'm back in Berkeley and ready to get to work. Just wanted to let you know I'm here. Andrae
User:kirkal
Hi!Andrae!
Glad to finally hear from you. Now, as Diwaker suggested, please go to the project page and put in your thoughts. Also, please try to let us know an area of interest where you will be focusing your efforts. This is not to sya that you can't have a role in other fields, jut that you will be primarily responsible for the section you choose.
Do visit the project web page and input your thoughts.
Thanks!
Cheers, Kiran
Hi everyone,
Welcome Andrae! Hope you've taken a look at the material we have so far. Its already almost midnight on the East coast, so I'm assuming that everyone is done putting in their stuff. I'm going to send Tap an email at midnight PST, unless someone has any objections to this. If you want a change of plans, please send me an email ASAP.
I think the proposal is in good shape. We perhaps need a couple of lines and some more references in the past and the future sections? I've put in some that I could find. Please go ahead and make changes as appropriate.
Cheers! Diwaker
Hi,
I have some references for the past. I will try to put them up tonight! However, can we wait to do the submission early Monday tomorrow? I'll try my best to put up a couple of references by 11:30 tonight (pacific time). thanks
-Stuart USER:S.Schimler
I added a paragraph (#2)to the intro. I want to make it clear up front that we are not just focusing on the strict definition of "outsourcing". Furthermore, I don't think we're going to spend time on outsourcing to other US companies/workers. The rest of the new paragraph leads into the other three.
Do you think we should move the first paragraph of the intro to the Past section? It's kind of random in this intro. That doesn't mean it can't be in the intro of our paper.
I also added a note about the references on the main page. We have a lot, but we aren't sure whether we'll use them all or what section they fit into.
Finally, I added a paragraph to the future. Do you think we need some text in 5 (not 5.x)? The other sections each have some text.
Let me know what you guys think.
David
Hi,
I added a little bit to the past section. I believe that oursourcing has deeper historical roots than the past 20 years. It is for that reason that you will see that my additions focus more on history. I will certainly explore the contemporary conditions. But others in the group will be talking about the current state of affairs; so I should probably try to make minor comparisons within my analysis. We'll talk more about this when the time comes.
On the front page of the site, I recommened that we look for more Academic sources. Web links are usually very bad sources for professionally written papers. If you have a scholar cited in the article, find that scholar's CV online and find his published works. They will be better to use for citations. Have a good night! Sincerely,
Stuart Schimler UC Berkeley 2006 User:S.Schimler
User:kirkal
hi!All!
made a few additions to the future section...the proposal looks good, ppl!nice job! -Kiran
Hi,
I added a couple of lines to that future part. It sounds half-way decent. I'm half asleep, so I can't really tell. Feel free to improve on it!
-Stuart USER:S.Schimler
Hey everyone,
Since the submissions are due by end of day on Monday, we can hold off until sometime tomorrow.
good night!
Diwaker
User:kirkal
hi!all!
I guess the proposal is as complete as it can get. if no one objects to
this in the next half hour, i will go ahead and submit it. you have
been warned! ;-);-)
Kiran
I agree with Stuart about using academic sources. I was looking for references on the US tax incentives to put on our description page, and came across all of those. Some of the sites are clearly biased and others are just articles, but I figured they might give us some ideas on different viewpoints or point us to some better sources. I posted them so that I can read them in the future. Do you have some pointers on where we should search academic resources on outsourcing? Search engines aren't very helpful for that purpose. Unfortunately, there isn't a "Journal of Outsourcing". I'm guessing that some business journals have had some articles. ACM and IEEE may have also.
David
User:kirkal
hi!ppl!
yes, the idea is definitely good...but, as David pointed out, we really have no idea of which source can be considered as an authoritative must-refer-to versus a mere article. one doubt here,though: does this mean we can't cite articles from magazines like "Wired" as our sources? Maybe we can try "The Economist". Thats a very high-fi magazine for economics and should be accepted as a definitive source.
also, I'd like to draw a distinction here: for policy matters, we should not use articles as references but , for the other areas of our brief, dealing with past and present trends and future suggestions, i do think referring to articles makes sense. History - Stuart will have to let us know if there is an exhaustive repository like at Citeseer for tech. papers.If so, we can use them else go with the articles for the trends section - but articles from reputed magazines would be more desirable,I guess.
cheers, Kiran
Hi,
Yes, you can use prestigious magazines- especially for contemporary events where Academics might be a step behind. If any experts are mentioned, track them down and look at their resume for their published works. Then you'll have a better source. Online websites with no real authority are very bad sources. Wired sounds good though. Newspapers, such as the NY Times are also acceptable; as is the Wall Street Journal, which might be a particularly good source for us. For history, most works will be done by business historians and faculty. There are some history journals on JSTOR. (www.jstor.org) See if your library will give you access. I'm sure UCSD will, since UCB does. Check it out. You can search through lots of journals!
We all have top notch research libraries, so there shouldn't be a real problem. You should do a library search and see what you can find. Using a Berkeley search, I just found a couple of works:
Outsourcing for radical change : a bold approach to enterprise transformation / <2004> Author: Linder, Jane C. Published: New York : AMACOM, c2004 and
Outsourcing in a global economy / <2002> Author: Grossman, Gene M. Published: Cambridge, MA. : National Bureau of Economic Research, c2002. So these books will probably be good and I am sure there are others. If you need to track down a specific topic, tell me, and I'll see if I can help.
Sincerely, Stuart USER:S.Schimler
