The management and optimization of resources in economic organizations has been a fundamental task of administrative models, however, in recent decades, factors such as globalization, differentiation of products and services and economic competition, instead of military (Ganga Contreras & Toro Reinoso, 2008), have led companies to seek strategies to obtain flexibility within their industrial or service processes that allow them to remain in force within the global market.
One of these strategies has consisted of reducing the direct costs of the organization through outsourcing, also called outsourcing in Spanish, in Mexico in the last 10 years, contracting via outsourcing has doubled (Puga, 2014), so this article offers an overview of the origins, evolution and paradigms that the consolidation of this personnel management strategy supposes for the Mexican labor culture.
Origin
The origin of the practice of outsourcing is not current, even in Mesoamerican societies there were groups independent of the owner who were dedicated to working the land, however, placing ourselves in a current context, the ideology that gave the guideline for the conceptualization of outsourcing appears in the Adam Smith's theory of the division of labor (Ganga Contreras & Toro Reinoso, 2008), however there are two main visions of how this form of labor hiring was conceived:
- One in the framework of the post-industrial revolution in the 70s when companies in the United States began to engage in alternative businesses to their main activity. (Curiel Sandoval, 2013) The other in the sixties in Italy where the transition from traditional informal agriculture to agribusiness creates a need for specialized labor where outsourcing makes its appearance to provide, at a lower cost, services in the agricultural sector. (Echaiz Moreno, 2008).
Definition
Outsourcing is a compound Anglo-Saxon word, "out" outside and "source" source, so it would translate "from external source" and although it is also often called subcontracting, legally they are different terms since this last word in civil law is used To describe when one contract depends on another, outsourcing only refers to the contract with which one or more services are provided, including the availability of workers. (Ganga Contreras & Toro Reinoso, 2008)
Present
Although less than half a century has passed since the application of this management strategy, we currently live in an age of outsourcing. The companies that hire under this labor scheme are more and more and in a greater range of activities that go from design to assembly, from research and development to marketing, distribution and after-sales service. Some firms have gone so far as to become "virtual" manufacturers, owning designs for many products but not manufacturing just one. (Grossman & Elhanan, 2005)
Because outsourcing involves more than the purchase of a certain type of good or service, it has been difficult to measure the growth of outsourcing, there has been a rapid international expansion in a group of industries such as textiles, garments, footwear, industrial machinery, electrical equipment, transportation equipment, chemicals and beverages. (Campa & Goldberg, 1997)
Types
There are many types of outsourcing classification, many of them have to do with the line to which the service provider is engaged, however it is possible to establish a typology according to the level of integration and openness in which the company wishes to maintain the services of the seller, is divided into three (Ganga Contreras & Toro Reinoso, 2008):
- Basic outsourcing: where the contract is concluded in favor of the supply of preparation materials, purchase of basic services and the use of consultants. Structural outsourcing: It is one where the service seller is related to operational and administrative activities, the openness and dependence on the supplier is greater since it is part of the structure of the contracting company. Value-added outsourcing: related to research and development, continuous improvement processes, and know-how (from English to know-how, it is an Anglo-Saxon expression used in international trade to refer to pre-existing knowledge that is not always academic, including: techniques, secret information, theories and even private data).
Advantage
Like any business management tool, its implementation entails disadvantages and benefits, which are proportional to the classification of the previous paragraph between the providers and the service contractor, the most important are:
- Cost savings, by having the flexibility to contract or terminate a labor relationship according to demand or the season of the year in which there is a greater or lesser commercial flow, but the above requires a choice of a supplier that guarantees the timely and excellent selection of personnel to be hired. For this reason, the reduction of personnel becomes another benefit of outsourcing and with it the reduction of the statistical fluctuations that the industry is prone to due to changes in the economy. Employees free from tedious tasks in order to allow them to concentrate on basic activities, such as cleaning, surveillance, pest control, among many others.Taking advantage of the outsourcing provider's experience in activities that are unrelated to the company's main business but that are nevertheless essential for optimal operation or customer satisfaction, such as the management of information systems or after-sales services (Cuesta Santos, 2005). Achieve greater financial flexibility through the sale of assets that were previously used in the outsourced activity and that could represent a “white elephant” since their cost / benefit instead of representing profits could reflect the opposite. Have access to external knowledge and technologies. Of course, this only if the provider brings new capabilities and innovative technologies and not only from the workforce.It is assumed that outsourcing service providers will provide quality services or workforce, so the recruitment and personnel selection processes of the company can be lightened both in personnel and invested resources.
Disadvantages
The arguments presented above are theoretically in favor of outsourcing. However, it has been observed that some of them may, in certain circumstances, be arguments against outsourcing.
This is the case of the reduction of personnel expenses that can have a negative impact on the social environment for the organization. (Dolgui & Proth, 2013)
This is where management skills and the use of research-worthy tools such as mathematical models for the evaluation and hiring of outsourcing providers is a necessary step before putting the future of the company in the hands of third parties without knowing it. Since several scenarios can be presented, one of them is the dilemma of the competition, when establishing relationships with providers of human talent or services, links are created that require flows of technical and / or privileged information which must be absolutely verified, supervised and legislated to prevent this relationship from becoming a flight of intellectual capital that can be used against the contracting organization itself.
The existence of outsourcing necessarily exerts a series of restrictions on the buyer. The following are the main limitations (Ganga Contreras & Toro Reinoso, 2008):
- The freedom of the buyer is reduced. In particular, all activities that include a vendor cannot be changed without rebalancing the organization. This readjustment could be complex. It may even require a renegotiation with the seller.The investment opportunity of the company in the area in which it is being provided may become null due to the expenses incurred by the third party.The loss of the motivational laso of belonging to the organization, making a analogy using a colloquial language deeply rooted in the productive systems of our country: "not having the shirt on well."
As the outsourcing provider becomes important in the buyer's organization, the latter's freedom can be significantly reduced.
Therefore, we are going to take into account that the outsourcing of some relevant system of the company reduces its degree of freedom. This phenomenon is even more important when the choice of the organization was motivated in part by the benefits offered by the country of the outsourcing service provider (the tax incentive policy, for example), since in this case, the pressure on the buyer is stronger. (Dolgui & Proth, 2013)
But even if it is a global trend, are companies correct in following the steps of this type of hiring?
At this point, there are, especially in Mexico, two aspects, on the one hand outsourcing from the perspective of companies, which was described in the previous paragraphs, but there is also the vision of outsourcing (especially HR) from the perspective of the trade union organizations and the worker himself, from which, this type of hiring is considered synonymous with austerity and with it, low-paid jobs, elimination of worker rights and the acquisition of labor force without having a direct responsibility with the employee. (Curiel Sandoval, 2013)
However, although socially outsourcing is not well seen by the majority of union sectors, the federal labor law underwent modifications in 2012, one of them was the legalization of “subcontracting”, this action was issued when in July 2009 they were published modifications to the IMSS law where in the words of the law: “… the beneficiary of the works or services will assume the obligations established by the law in relation to said workers…” (Silva Mendez, 2010)
Although the law has many inconsistencies, the truth is that the legal bases for outsourcing are contemplated and regulated in our country.
conclusion
Outsourcing arises as a result of the enormous changes in the operation of companies and, consequently, the human resources department has consolidated in one of its most controversial branches. The challenges imposed on organizations by the rapidly changing environment have made the HR function assume a new role that ranges from being a recruiter, recruiter, trainer to that of a strategic partner, achieving a competitive advantage through the people you employ. Unfortunately in our country there are industrial entities that take advantage of this strategic tool to completely ignore the social welfare of their workforce, which is why there is a clamor to regulate this type of hiring.
Bibliography
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