ManagementSpeak: We are not having any layoffs.
Translation: The layoffs won't be announced until next week.
‑ IS Survivalist Bill Adams announces the proper translation this week.
Premise No. 1: Businesses aren't moral agents. This isn't up for debate. The Business Roundtable, the official voice of American
industry, made this clear in 1997: Businesses exist solely to maximize shareholder value. Fiduciary responsibilities? Yes. Legal obligations? Sure. But does morality enter into it? Since most business success comes at the expense of competitors, it can't.
Premise No. 2: Businesses have no patriotic duty. Don't be aghast. It's all about shareholder value, remember? If moving manufacturing
to
Kuala Lumpur
helps, fine and dandy. If opening a post office box in
Bermuda to avoid paying taxes increases profits, wonderful. A business isn't beholden to any particular nation. (Best exposition
on this subject: Arthur Jensen's speech to Howard Beale in Network. Rent it, and you'll find that Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant satire has been transformed into the business community's manifesto.)
Premise No. 3: Patriotism and morality are not connected. Unless you think Americans are intrinsically more deserving than
other people or that any action performed by the
United States of America
is automatically good, it's inescapable that patriotism has as much to do with morality as being a Chicago Cubs fan. At best,
patriotism is about self-interest -- not a bad thing, but not a moral issue.
Now we're ready: Is moving work offshore immoral? No.
You're acting as the agent of your employer, an amoral (not immoral) entity. You're increasing shareholder value, a goal with
no intrinsic moral substance. And for every human being you lay off, another gets a job. Going offshore is morally neutral.
You are, perhaps, being unpatriotic: Creating unemployment here by transferring jobs elsewhere isn't to this country's benefit.
Yet even that formula is simplistic: If competitors reduce their costs by going offshore and you don't, all you're doing is
contributing to your company's failure -- in the long run, you're not saving jobs at all. What choice do you really have?
Your choice starts with your methodologies. Some lend themselves to sending work offshore. Others, such as "adaptive methodologies,"
are better suited to up-close-and-personal onshore staffing ... and hold the promise of increasing the productivity of your
developers and integrators enough to compensate for offshore rates.
Adaptive methodologies don't fit all situations. Neither do the methodologies required for successful offshoring, nor anything
else for that matter. Adaptive methodologies, offshoring, the Rational Unified Process, structured analysis, and all the other
techniques available to you are just tools in your management toolkit.
Your responsibility isn't to offshore, onshore, or anything else. It's to use the best tool for each job.
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