Career Influencing Global Trends

The two global trends that will affect this learner's career in the next five to seven years are globalization and outsourcing. As an information technology, (I.T.), professional, continued erosion of the I.T. job market certainly does not make this learner feel any better about job prospects. This learner and his peers must improve personal marketability, flexibility, and mobility preferences and options when pursuing new employment opportunities. This learner will counter the effects of this trend by enhancing educational credentials enhancing value to prospective employers.

The CEOs of most corporations primary objective is to maximize profits and value to shareholders and do so by looking at cost-cutting measures that include reductions to labor and benefit costs that are sometimes resolved by searching for inexpensive, productive labor in markets other than the domestic market of the company, wherever it might be. This usually leads to outsourcing arrangements offshore. Rapidly changing business environments require leadership to adopt strategies that foster current success and invest in activities promoting competitive advantage in the future one method of which is in utilizing an outsourcing strategy. Many leaders believe outsourcing helps to keep a business competitive into the twenty-first century (Yaghoubi, Moradi, & Banihashemi, 2011). As a result, companies must develop creative and innovative methods of managing business. Companies have developed strategies to solve problems to reduce cost and improve quality for decades. Companies engage in downsizing, eliminating unprofitable functions, and outsourcing as one of these strategies in response to requirements for more efficient ways to address competitiveness (Yaghoubi, Moradi, & Banihashemi, 2011). Outsourcing is an organizational change strategy, which positively or negatively influences productivity (Yaghoubi, Moradi, & Banihashemi, 2011).

The traditional definition of outsourcing is turning over all or part of an organization's information systems operation to outside contractors or service providers while offshoring refers to outsourcing in another country (Mamaghani, 2006). Companies can outsource any number of organizational departments that usually include, but are not limited to payroll, human resources, various or financial departments. The first global outsourcing occurred in the late 1960s in the automobile industry and is still active today as the outsourcing of manufacturing and many other service-based industries continue to outsource with the focus on lowering cost at the expense of it domestic workforce. Companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan have led globalization because they moved products and services into developing countries. Companies in developing countries and are now reaching into western economies offering a talented workforce at a fraction of the price.

When a company outsources a service, leadership must ensure it comprehensively fits the needs of the firm and examine where other operating efficiencies exist by understanding the specific needs, issues, and available options in order to address all challenges presented (Neiderer, 2011). Factors promoting globalization include the consolidation of European currencies into the Euro, and the North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which this learner remembers Ross Perot vehemently against back in the early 1990s when he employed this learner. Previous instances of globalization involving textiles and manufacturing evolved over decades whereas today's foray into globalization occurs almost instantly over communication networks enabling business, projects, and jobs to be transferred to virtual workforces across the world almost transparently.

The current recession will be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and factors such as globalization and outsourcing that affect employment will evolve over the next 20 years changing the workplace completely with well-trained, flexible workers at a premium (Challenger, & Docksai, 2009). As more companies globalize, employers worldwide will have to offer