The White Collar Job Migration - Part 3

D.C. Denison, The Boston Globe, writes:

HANOVER, N.H. -- From where Diane Noyes is sitting, in a modest college cafe near the campus of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, outsourcing is not a threat.

She's thought about it, studied it as a member of Tuck's class of 2004, but instead sees the business trend that is sending thousands of American jobs overseas as a mixture of opportunity and necessity, both for her and the US economy.

"Outsourcing may actually work to the advantage of American-trained business students," Noyes, 29, said. "Management is something that developing nations will probably outsource to us."

Bart Cornelissen, a fellow member of Tuck's class of 2004, agreed. "If you look at it from just a US perspective, or a regional perspective, outsourcing can be daunting," he said. "But from our perspective, it's more like a shifting that moves in both directions.

"There's actually a lot of opportunity hidden in there," he said.

As American companies embrace the outsourcing of jobs and operations, causing widespread concern among employees and suppliers, one group is resolutely focused on the flip side of the trend: business school students and their professors. They are eagerly exploring the "hidden opportunities" that may exist in the midst of this global economic upheaval. And the way these students are thinking about outsourcing, as they start their careers in business, could foreshadow the long-term consequences of this restructuring of the American work force, and an indication of who is likely to win and lose as more jobs and functions move to developing countries.

Significantly, many business students do not share the anxiety about outsourcing that plagues many workers in manufacturing and high tech. Instead, these students eagerly embrace outsourcing as an inevitable, even necessary, corporate strategy that will enable US companies to compete in a global economy. Even those who are conflicted about its impact assume that outsourcing will be a major factor on the economic landscape for years to come.

Asked which industries will be most affected by outsourcing and globalization, Annie-Pierre Hurd, a second-year student in MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program, paused.

"I'm trying to think of an industry that won't be affected," she said finally.

Many business students, in fact, are already planning careers around the premise that experience with outsourcing will be a crucial job skill, and are eagerly seeking out international experience as a way to increase their ability to manage offshore operations.

"To allow yourself maximum access to opportunity, you have to think globally," Noyes said. "You can't think, 'Well, maybe I'll work for an American company here, and maybe they'll send me abroad.' You have to think in reverse, about those up-and-coming foreign companies -- in China or Korea or wherever -- that will hire people like me."

The faculty at business schools are also increasingly focused on issues related to outsourcing. At Tuck, associate professor Matthew J. Slaughter teaches a required course called "Global Economics for Managers" and a popular elective called "Countries and Companies in the International Economy."

"There's now a premium placed on the ability to control these big global outsourcing networks," Slaughter said. "You can see it in the consulting firms, where many students aspire to work. McKinsey, for example, has just about doubled its offices around the world."

Tuck also has its bustling Center for International Business, which focuses on the economic, social, and political factors that affect business in global economies. David Pyke, the school's associate dean for the MBA program, teaches courses in operations management, logistics, and supply chain management -- the complex process of managing a corporation's many offshore operations and making sure that they all work together.

"It used to be that a company owned the supply chain," Pyke said. "If a company needed something, they made it. But now things are different. Now it's important for students to learn to think about 'Where do we make it Where should we make it' at a very high level."

Ethics, organizational impact, and "corporate citizenship" are integral parts of the outsourcing discussion at Tuck, according to professor M. Eric Johnson, who teaches a course on supply chain management. But "protectionism is no longer an option," he said.

"If you try to get protectionist about an entire firm, you won't be able to compete globally," he said. "Whereas if you are intelligent about what you outsource, you can grow in other directions."

At MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing program, sponsored jointly by the Sloan School of Management and the Engineering Systems Division in the School of Engineering, "we prepare people to be leaders in these global firms," said Bill Hanson, the program's codirector. "Our students understand that their careers probably won't be in one place."

Said Brian Bowers, who graduated from the MIT program last year: "What companies want now is people with the ability to make strategic decisions and operate in this global environment. They want to know, can you navigate all these different cultures"

At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which is better known for training hands-on scientists and engineers rather than business managers, the rise of outsourcing has led to a broadened mission to incorporate international experience. Today, more than half of the students participate in extended projects outside the United States while enrolled in the school, said Richard Vaz, the associate dean of the school's Interdisciplinary and Global Studies Division.

Over the last 10 years, WPI has aggressively expanded its contacts with companies around the world as the school seeks to place students in two-month immersion engineering projects.

Chris O'Malley, a 2003 chemical engineering graduate who is working on a master's degree, is typical of many WPI students. He spent two months before his junior year working on an engineering project in Venice. Now O'Malley said he would not be surprised if his first job after school involves either working abroad himself or working for a company with extensive operations in other countries.

"A lot of the chemical engineering jobs that used to be here in New England have transferred to other countries," he said. "There's a good chance that when I finish my master's, the opportunities will be overseas."

The reality of globalization and outsourcing has changed the way WPI students think about their careers. "What many students are realizing is that virtually every job now involves either buying things from people in other countries, selling things to customers in other countries, or competing with firms in other countries," Vaz said. "It's almost impossible now for people going into science and technology to escape the fact that their careers will be played out on a global stage."

One undeniable factor at many of the world's elite business schools is the increasing number of international students. Dartmouth's Tuck School draws about 30 percent of its students from outside the United States; another 20 percent have worked internationally before matriculating.

John Owens, executive director of Tuck's Center for International Business, predicts that these American-trained business students will fuel increasing rounds of globalization and outsourcing.

"When you look at a country like China, what many of the companies there want and need is to understand how they can globalize," he said. "That's their goal: to become major global players. They need someone with an understanding of international markets, and they are looking to American-trained business managers to help them achieve that."

- D.C. Denison can be reached at .

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.