Large-Scale Outsourcing and "McDonaldization"
In line with Ritzer's explanation of McDonaldization, this essay takes the position that the phenomenon of large-scale outsourcing of production of tangible goods by American manufacturers has the attributes of excessive rationalization. The perceived benefits of transferring factory production from the United States to such states as Mexico, Hong Kong, India, and--increasingly and most egregiously in the past 10 years--China since the 1980s began with trimming labor and day-to-day operating costs substantially and included such other advantages as more lenient regulatory customs in the outsourcing locale and domestic tax advantages. Overarching all was the objective of "turning core competencies into value" (Greaver 91).
Corporations that outsourced production would benefit from keeping production offshore and would have to pay taxes only on revenues repatriated to the United States. Nor, indeed, was outsourcing confined to offshore production of tangible goods, such as automobiles, apparel, shoes, computers, televisions, stereos, radios, and toys. With the extraordinary advances in global telecommunications, technical service providers found operational and labor-saving advantages in locating various services reliant on telecommunications in high-tech-oriented locations, such as India. Ritzer (115) cites the offshoring of telemarketing activities and, more generally, points to outsourcing as a feature of globalization. Thus and American Hewlett-Packard computer user who called for technical support would speak, not necessarily to an HP representative in the corporation's headquarters state of California or anywhere else in the U.S. but rather to a telephone representative in, say, Bangalore. Customers would benefit because they would be able to benefit from lower prices--or at least the manufacturer or service provider would be able to widen the marginal utility of pr...