insourcing

[Dan Goncharoff]

I have recently seen the word "reshoring" used as the reverse of
outsourcing, in the context of moving jobs abroad/back.

Some of the credit seems to go to Harry Moser, who created the Reshoring
Initiative in 2010.

DanG


On Sat, Jul 7, 2012 at 11:57 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      insourcing
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Is the Obama campaign repurposing "insourcing" to communicate a new
> meaning? Or are they simply being obliquitous in communicating the
> established meaning?
>
> There are two meanings in the OED:
>
> 1. The action or process of obtaining goods or services in-house, esp.
> by using existing resources or employees. Cf. outsourcing n.
> 2. Chiefly U.S. The action of undertaking work outsourced by another
> (esp. foreign) company.
>
> The first applies to a single enterprise, the second suggests bringing
> jobs /into/ the country.
>
> The campaign use is a blend of the two.
>
> Outsourcing has two basic meanings--a company hiring an outside resource
> (an accounting firm, a law firm, a vendor to complete a part of the
> contract, etc.) to do work that they would rather not use permanent
> employees on. Bringing in temporary staff to perform a certain duty is
> not outsourcing, but hiring another company to perform just that task is.
>
> So the OED has this meaning:
>
> >   The action or practice of obtaining goods or services by contract
> > from outside sources.
>
>
> The second meaning is national--instead of outsourcing tasks, jobs are
> being outsourced out of the country. So a task that might otherwise be
> done by a US-based company is sent out of the country for someone else
> to do cheaper. For that matter, the entire company, sans the employees,
> may be sent elsewhere. The difference is not particularly subtle, but
> the OED does not have this one.
>
> AHD bridges the two ideas by simply suggesting that cost-cutting is the
> primary purpose of outsourcing:
>
> > The procuring of services or products, such as the parts used in
> > manufacturing a motor vehicle, from an outside supplier or
> > manufacturer in order to cut costs.
>
> But this is preposterous. Standard outsourcing exists for other reasons
> as well--usually to avoid the creation of a unit that would only perform
> a particular task or to allow core employees to focus on a particular
> set of tasks while letting an outside source handle peripheral tasks.
> Legal and accounting outsourcing can be done for the purpose of avoiding
> a conflict of interest. Some law firms outsource some of their work in
> order to reduce the load--in no small part due to the fact that the
> money to cover the costs would come from a different account
> (non-payroll) and not because outsourcing would be cheaper (there is a
> certain convenience to not hiring and then laying off employees only for
> the duration of the excess load).
>
> In contrast, international outsourcing is done solely for the purpose of
> cutting costs (and now that I said that, someone is going to come up
> with an example where this is not the case--but the point is that the
> entire process is different, thus requiring a separate definition).
>
> Collins lists two meaning, but neither deals with international
> outsourcing:
>
> > 1. the act of subcontracting (work) to another company
> >  -->  "The difficulties of outsourcing have been compounded by the
> > increasing resistance of trade unions."
> > 2. the act of buying in (components for a product) rather than
> > manufacturing them
>
> Macmillan adds another twist, suggesting that outsourcing may be done
> for the purpose of obtaining expert work, not available in-house:
>
> > an arrangement in which work is done by people from outside your
> > company, usually by a company that is expert in that type of work
>
> [My suggestion above was that often the less-expert work gets
> outsourced--but, apparently, it works both ways.]
>
> MWOLD gives nearly the same definition as OED, but the examples are of
> the other kind.
>
> > **to procure (as some goods or services needed by a business or
> > organization) under contract with an outside
> > <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outside> supplier <decided
> > to /outsource/ some back-office operations>
>
> Examples:
>
> > //
> > The company /outsources/ many of its jobs to less developed countries.
> > The work was /outsourced/ to a factory in China.
>
> Wiktionary comes up with the most compact definition of outsourcing.
>
> > The transfer of a business function to an external service provider
>
>
> Clearly, the "insourcing vs. outsourcing" meme pushed by the Obama ads
> applies to the second meaning of oursourcing. Simply hiring another
> company to perform a task is not politically sensitive, but sending jobs
> to other countries certainly is--and it's only too easy to accuse Mitt
> Romney of that (some have suggested that he pioneered international
> outsourcing as a cost-cutting measure). So "insourcing" has to be the
> opposite of that, or keeping the jobs /in/ the country. But that's not
> quite the same as insourcing 1.--keeping the jobs in-house. It merely
> refers to a protectionist preference of hiring US-based workers to
> perform tasks. In some sense, a company can be outsourcing a particular
> job, but insourcing it--in the Obama sense--by hiring a US company to do
> it. But one can also look at the contrast as something else--US should
> not be sending jobs overseas, but bringing foreign jobs here, in the OED
> insourcing 2. sense.
>
> Obviously, someone who disagrees with me on drawing the distinction
> between two different kinds of outsourcing will not see any controversy
> in the Obama ads using "insourcing" for contrast. That still would not
> explain why there is only one ousourcing and two insourcing entries.
>
>      VS-)
>
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