Free example essay on Outsourcing:
Outsourcing is most certainly not a new concept. It has existed for thousands of years. It has only been called outsourcing beginning a few decades ago. Both humans and organizations throughout history have never completed all tasks by themselves. In fact, during the Age of Egypt, human beings provided goods and services to others, while during the Middle Ages, people came together to buy and sell goods and services at the village market.
While human society migrated from an agricultural to an industrial basis, there was an increase in the amount of goods and services being outsourced. Entire communities moved out of rural areas and into villages, turning them into towns and then eventually into cities. Fewer people raised their own livestock, grew their own produce, or completed tasks themselves. Tasks that required a highs skill level were always done by third parties, such as carpentry, building, etc.
There were four typical reasons why work would outsourced. First and foremost was cost. There was a lower cost involved when someone else performed the task, particularly where economies of scale was concerned e.g. raising livestock, growing produce. Another reason was time. Long ago, work was quite labor intensive and people had only so much time during the day to complete the tasks they had to do. Prioritization of work was necessary as was completion of the most important or most urgent tasks while not doing the less important tasks. Those forgotten tasks would only get done when there would be time, or a third party would complete them.
Another important reason was a lack of skilled and/or sufficient resources. In a way like time, there were only so many people to do the work, and if the work had to be done, then more people were brought in to do the work. Some work could only be completed with specific skills which in a good deal of cases needed several years to learn.
A few examples of these skills were clothing manufacture, carpentry, building construction, etc. It made sense and was easier to have tasks like these performed by expert craftspeople rather than attempting to perform the tasks internally.
The fourth reason had to do with people’s attitudes. Certain tasks were considered to be of low importance in the overall scheme of things. Although the tasks had to be done it was considered servile work and was thus passed off for somebody else to complete. Tasks like these included cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc.