Outsourcing and off-shoring

by Dr. Hsu

Globalisation has resulted in the world becoming a big family. This is especially so for big businesses that operate all over the world. In the process, we have 2 new business practices that are often used by multinationals to maximise production at the lowest cost.

These are known as "off-shoring" and ‘outsourcing'.

Many of the electronic giants set up factories in low wage countries such as India, China, and to a lesser extent Asean countries. These factories produce parts that are more labour intensive and thus, by using the manpower of the low wage countries, the manufacturers save on labour costs and become more competitive. This is offshoring.

Products nowadays have become so sophisticated that no one manufacturer can manufacture all the parts in a final product. Let’s take a computer. There are so many parts involved. So manufacturers have started a process called outsourcing, and let other businesses produce certain parts for them.. Outsourcing has lots of advantages, one being the economy of scale, costs become lower as the outsourced producers often concentrate on doing only a few items and thus become more specialised and have a certain economy of scale since they often produce the same parts for many big manufacturers.. An example being the hard disc manufacturers for computers. Seagate manufactures for many brands and thus become more specialised and has economy of scale to bring down costs. This is outsourcing.

The Big Brother has learned from these business practices and learned well. Prior to 2008, racial rhetorics –including that of a Youth Chief brandishing a Keris– cost them many votes especially among the urban people. So now they have learned their mistakes.

They have outsourced the racist and extremist part to a NGO. So to many people, especially the less politically inclined, the Big Brother has become less racist and the “One” slogan holds out hope for them, thus making them reconsidering their stand of whether their votes should go back to the Big Brother. On the other hand, the outsourced NGO’s continued racial rhetoric, complemented by the Old Horse’s distorted logic, makes sure that the rural Malay votes would go back to them as these rhetoric and twisted logic play onto the insecurity psyche of the rural indigenous population.

This is typical of double-faced tactic, acting differently to different audience groups. Only this time, they have outsourced one face to NGO and keep the other face to show to the other group of audience. I suspect the top brass of all the component parties knew about this tactic, but chose not to answer them when members asked about this.To the top brass, nothing matters more than their own positions and future prospects.. I personally have raised this many times on deaf ears.

Then they also employ Off-shoring. Some of the politicians aligned to them have set up minor political parties. The purpose of these off-shored parties is to create multi-cornered fights to split the votes of those who would vote for opposition because they are fed up of the Big Brother. Many of these people voted the opposition the last time not because they like the opposition, but because of their dislike of the Big Brother.. So these minor parties– there are now too numerous to name ,” Love Party” “Guitar Party” etc etc –will play such roles to split the opposition against the Big Brother.

Off shoring is now being employed to the hilt in the Sarawak State Election. By having multi-cornered fights, the advantage is with the Big Brother. This, coupled with their formidable election machinery and almost unlimited resources, makes sure that the opposition will face the most difficult fight in their quest to obtain more than one third of seats..

The Big Brother has learned well and employed business tactic well. So the big question is: Can the opposition do a 308 in Sarawak?