Offshoring and Delegation
I came across a blog titled “Is Offshoring the Same as Delegation?” where Ron suggested that outsourcing and offshoring is just another step on the delegation path. Ron goes on to quote Professor Stephen Gillers of NYU Law, a co-panelist and recognized ethics expert who explains that "with appropriate supervision and disclosure, outsourcing and offshoring are ethically permissible”
This is a very interesting notion since outsourcing is all about extending an organization’s capabilities by reaching out externally, and increasingly globally.
In the presentation, Ron makes an argument for delegation by highlighting how delegation is
- Common once a firm has more than a few lawyers
- Delegation of legal and non legal tasks.
Though the presentation and Ron’s views focus on outsourcing and offshoring of legal work, it could be other work tasks that can be decoupled and be done ‘offline.’ This is also the argument that Prof. Murugesan and I made in our Cutter IT Journal paper focused on “The IT Innovation Process: Necessity or Oxymoron?” Cutter has a Special Offer (I guess it is for a limited time) making the issue available online.
I look forward to comments and review of the writeup, and will be glad to continue the debate on this blog.
