Xuất khẩu gia công phần mềm ở Ireland

Xuất khẩu gia công phần mềm ở Ireland Hiện trạng xuất khẩu gia công phần mềm ở Ireland Số liệu tăng qua các năm. Cơ cấu của các số liệu. Phân tích lý do Ảnh hưởng đến lực lượng lao động Ireland Vài dự đoán về tình hình xuất khẩu phần mềm ở Ireland trong 20 năm tới.

What will be the long-term impact of offshoring on Ireland’s IT workforce?

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I Overview

IT offshoring is considered necessary for companies across the globe to achieve economic effectiveness and is becoming an irreversible trend However, IT offshoring is also regarded as one of the most critical issues of the early 2000s as it causes concern about job loss (Carmel and Tjia, 2007).While across Europe the demand for ICT worker is now outstripping the supply and will significantly increase by 2020 (Hüsing et al., 2013),paradoxically, European programmers are losing their jobs There is a prediction that UK will lose 150.000 jobs due to IT offshoring(Carmel and Tjia, 2007) This triggers a need of research into the implications of IT offshoring in Ireland to Irish IT workforce

Within the Irish marketplace there exists a strong culture of outsourcing with IT managed services and web hosting being among the most common activities outsourced.This high demandoriginates from economic benefits that outsourcing brings: 92% of organizations believe that outsourcing adds value to their company(Mazars, 2011)

A recent report from EGFSN indicates that the strong demand for high-level ICT skills such as

IT management, planning and consultancy will continue to grow while the number of computer science graduates is expected grow only slightly over the next 6 years (EGFSN, 2013).This suggests that Ireland’s IT offshoring activities have already had implications on its IT workforce, which poses a need of research to confirm or reject the hypothesis

.Over 6-years experience as an IT graduate and software engineer in international software companies, Tung has a tacit knowledge of the managerial aspects of IT offshoring The research topic is deeply rooted in his background and interest

A graduate of Commerce in UCC,Eolan has experience in both research projects and experience

as a recruitment coordinator for a technology company in 3rd year placement which peaked his own interest in the subject and offered a constructive environment for learning Through this Eolan has had an inside look at IT workforce and the distribution of employment

II Literature Review

1 Trends in IT offshoring & IT human resource in Ireland

The general prediction is that outsourcing in Ireland will continue to increase (Mazars, 2011) A

skills and knowledge that was not available internally and enhanced process efficiency and quality Furthermore, there is a the possibility of saving through outsourcing furthering the ROI, encouraging managers to further adopt the practice(Mazars, 2011)

Although outsourcing causes some concerns such as job loss, wage decline and military threat, political backslash has little effect on trend of outsourcing(Carmel and Tjia, 2007) A survey from (Mazars, 2011)also shows that manager decisions on outsourcing are not affected by economic downturn 42% of respondents indicated that they had increased their use of outsourcing in the preceding 12 months as compared to 33% in 2010 25% of companies indicated that they would increase their use of outsourcing over the next 12 months (Figure 1)

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Figure 1: Outsourcing trends(Mazars, 2011)

The results from EGFSN's study indicate that Ireland is likely to face a significant annual increase in demand for high-level ICT skills of around 5% in the next 6 years Paradoxically, the number of Irish ICT graduate in computer science and is predicted to increase only slightly by

2016 and then fluctuating by 2018 (EGFSN, 2013).It leads to a hypothesis that IT offshoring activitiesresults in high demand for high-level ICT skills and at the same time reduces the demand for lower level ICT skills

2 Method of researching into IT Offshoring

(Tambe and Hitt, 2010) did a large scale research on the effect of IT offshoring on US’ IT labor Their finding is based on two surveys conducted in 2007;the first researched in the offshoring practices of 3,016 individual firms to discover factors such as whether and why these firms offshore, as well as what types of work and to what countries they offshore The second survey was targeted to 6704 individual workers to discover whether or not they had been displaced due

to offshore

The purpose of the two surveys is to test hypotheses that the offshoring rates for workers in IT industry differs significantly from the rates in other occupations, and that jobs which require face-to-face contact with US-based consumers or co-workers or require to perform hands-on work with US-based assets are less likely to be offshored

Quantitative method is the research method used in the paper Some statistical hypothesis testing practices used in the research are: Finding correlations between occupation and reasons for offshoring chi-squared test of the hypothesis of equality between displacement rates for IT and non-IT workers, probit analysis for offshore job types etc

Although the research was conducted in large scale, the fact that quantitative method is the only method in this research poses some concerns due to the fact that IT offshoring domain should be addressed in cultural and social context

III Research Question

1 The question

The main purpose of this research is to answerthis question:

What will be the long-term impact of outsourcing on Irelands IT workforce?

3 The question’s value

Research into this question isinteresting and worthwhile in the sense that it provides sources forIrish government's policy adjustment in human resource and in education system to address the negative implications of IT offshoring

4 Viability

In the context of the iBusiness program, this research is viable due to a number of reasons: The relevant knowledge and background of the authors, the relationships of the authors with some IT outsourcing companies and the availability of figures and statistics of Ireland's ICT workforce

5 Difficulty

Notwithstanding, researching into IT Offshoring faces some hurdles: Managers from both host companies and recruiting companies prefer containing information about IT Offshoring due to social backlash (Carmel and Tjia, 2007) As a result, collecting enough information for the research is not an easy task Furthermore, most discussion on IT offshoring relies on anecdotes, press reports and theoretical arguments, and most researches on this topic depends on subjective answers to questionnaire(Tambe and Hitt, 2010) To achieve good result demands meticulous analyzing of the data

IV Research Design

1 Mixed research method

As graduates coming from Computer Science and Commerce background, we are familiar with quantitative research method Applying quantitative research practices – conducting structured survey and analyzing available statistics – in our case, is relatively quick, economical and useful for studying large number of people These advantages meet the scope of this course, making it the first choice in our research

However, we also understand the disadvantages of quantitative method, such as the result of quantitative research are limited as they only provide numerical accounts which generally provide less elaborate description of human perception As suggested by (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1991), researchers should ensure that they adopt a perspective that is compatible with their own research interest while remaining open to the possibility of other assumptions and interests In our context, researching into IT offshoring demands an elaborate look at social and cultural aspects and a meticulous analysis of qualitative data rather and numerical ones

Considering the scope of the course and the appropriateness of research methods in the context

of IT offshoring, we choose a mixed approach to conduct our research Mixed method has some advantages such as “triangulation” – different practices and procedures of collecting and analyzing data will both enrich and confirm the picture of the situation, “complementary” – elaborating, enhancing and illustrating the results from one method with the results from another The choice of mixed method partly explains our choice of research practices which will be described later in this paper

6 Exclusion of case study research

Although we want to do a careful case study of an Irish company adopting IT offshoring, it is not feasible in the context of IT offshoring The reason is that, companies are generally concerned about the public relation fallout and as a result containing the information about IT offshoring as much as possible (Carmel and Tjia, 2007)

7 Secondary research

a Reason

There are a large number of available materials about IT outsourcing and IT labor in Ireland Researching into the body of knowledge in the research domain potentially provides directions and overview of the research

b Papers to look at

We will focus mainly on papers in the followingtwo categories:

• Mixed research method

To exploit the advantages of mixed research method, we decided to spend time to research into it

to know how to apply it effectively “Research methods for business students ” by (Saunders et al., 2009) and “Business research methods” by (Greener, 2008) is a useful textbook to help us obtain the essential points of the research method Furthermore, to see an example of applying this method in practice, we will consult the paper “Mixing Methods: The Entry of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches into the Research Process” by (Brannen, 2005)

• Research practices for IT Offshoring

We chose an empirical study conducted by (Tambe and Hitt, 2010)on IT offshoring in the US as

a core piece of our secondary:“How offshoring affects IT workers?” The paper examines the growth of IT outsourcing and how it affects, in the long term, the domestic IT sector The importance of this study for us is that it helps us develop a framework for identifying and analyzing changing organizational needs such as training It also allowed us to develop opinions

on how policy makers can affect an international IT workforce

The article raises some interesting questions we have to consider when presenting our own research proposal, such as we have to acknowledge the difference in scale between America and Ireland Furthermore, we know that our research will have to adapt to deal with the laws that affect offshoring in IT, and how the various Irish environmental factors affect such as low corporate tax rate, access to Europe and the knowledge base economy will alter our findings

• Other materials

IT Offshoring is a broad research area whichrequires profound knowledge of cultural and social factors involved in IT Offshoring activities We are aware that the success of the project depends

on our ability and commitment to research more into these factors To achieve this, we will need

to read some materials: “Offshoring Information Technology: Sourcing and Outsourcing to a Global Workforce” (Carmel and Tjia, 2007) which provides economic, politic and management considerations; some reports such as “Addressing Future Demand for High-Level ICT Skills”by (EGFSN, 2013)and “e-Leadership: e-Skills for Competitiveness and Innovation Vision, Roadmap and Foresight Scenarios” by (Hüsing et al., 2013) to have more broad view of IT labor’s status quo in Ireland and in Euro

c Technique

The techniques we used in secondary research will follow the paper “A Systems Approach to Conduct an Effective Literature Review in Support of Information Systems Research” by (Levy and Ellis, 2006)

d Expected result

We expect to have an overview of the status quo of Ireland’s IT labor and IT offshoring and more clear direction after the secondary research

8 Survey

a Reason

Although we can obtain statistics from Central Statistic Office (CSC), there is no guarantee that

we can request all information we need or information in the form we We insist on conducting a survey due to the fact that we can validate the status quo of the firms to which we send the survey, hence ensuring the consistency and accuracy of data Furthermore, the survey is ideal in that it can measure many variables without increasing the potential cost of time Data can be gathered from surveys at a low cost and quickly relative to the design or the issue of the survey

e Subjects

The subjects of the survey are both companies and individuals The list in

companies operating in various sectorscan serve as the start point to find the contact to send survey However, offshoring activites do not exist only in medium and big firms, but also in small firms Therefore, we must exploit our experience and relationship with other Irish firms to collect more contact For this type of survey, we should target the hiring managers or HR profession who has significant importance in hiring decisions because they are the gateway that information of offshoring activities must go through

We suggest using LinkedInto collect individuals’contact, focusing on Irish IT labor The survey must record the status of respondants such as their age, type of work and their workplacement under the effect of IT offshoring The detailed and final survey are only available after a careful secondary research and analysis of available statistics which will give us prelimirary focused point to target at

f Technique

This research is conducted via e-mailing a questionnaire to respondents, who then administer the survey themselves The central concern for this survey is the response rate, even an attractive questionnaire that is clear and concise needs additional attention to maximise the response rate

A response rate of less than 70% is not ideal as this would call into question the representativeness of the survey Although the size of our samples is small, we will try to choose representative samples i.e companies from small to big, in various sectors; individuals from different ages etc Using such stratery will possible generate findings that are representative of the whole population

To eliminate any confusion we would be specific with our questions and if asked a ‘Why’ question, it would be followed up by a sub-question to ensure validity According to (Lazarsfeld, 1935)the use of the ‘why’ question in market research is a source of misinformation unless phrased carefully and should preferably be supplemented with follow up questions

g Expected result

At the end of this phase we expect to have quantitative data which suggests possible reasons for particular relationships between variables and which can be analysed quantitatively using descriptive and inferential statistics

9 Analyzing data from Central Statistics Office

a Reason

Our statistics would be drawn from the central Statistics office as they have conducted much research into our area of interest and have worthwhile information relating to the facts and the trends Furthermore, the CSO meets the government criteria for quality statistical information at the regional and local levels They provide impartial and unbiased data on social and economic conductions They pay particular attention to the specialist needs of the research and academic community for more focused research and data

In 2010 the CSO invested heavily in IT with the installation of a Data Management System and upgraded their statistical analysis software to SAS enterprise Business Intelligence(Central Statistics Office, 2010) These investments would assist our research in providing the most up-to-date information on the trends of business

h Sources

The detailed plan of what data to look at is only available after the secondary research However, follows are some of types of data we are looking for, if available:

 Firms’ size and industries

 Number of abroad employee

 Salary for them

 Number of unemployment in IT labor in recent years

i Technique

For our analysis of the statistics we would use a numerical computing environment called MATLABwhich allows for compression of massive amounts of statistics in easily digestible graphs and information

j Expected Result

We want to see the trend of IT offshoring in Ireland, the status quo of Irish IT laborand some possible correlations between them

10.Interview

a Reason

The qualitative research interview seeks to describe and the meanings of central themes in the life world of the subjects The main task in interviewing is to understand the meaning of what the interviewees say (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2007).The interview seeks to find out answers on a more meaning level than a questionnaire This interview is a much more personal experience than a question as the interviewer works with the respondent Unlike our survey, the interview offers the opportunity to probe and ask follow up questions

k Subjects

Our interview would draw from several sources Initially we would like to speak to the people responsible for the decisions that result in outsourcing, the executives and managers in charge of plants with the potential for outsourcing For example, Intel or HP in Leixlip would present the perfect opportunity to conduct the interviews Although firmly embedded in Ireland, these organisations are constantly under threat of outsourcing as their operations expand along with global skills

We would also look to multinational organisations that have recently moved to Ireland, we would seek to find out their reasons for coming here Organisations such as Google, Twitter and Facebook have established European headquarters in Ireland

The interview would need to be organised through official chains of communication Making contact first with the HR department and establishing who the best potential interviewee is Once established organising a time and a place to suit the interviewee and make them feel comfortable

is the next step

l Technique

In conducting interviews, ethical issues are one of the main concerns Confidentiality must be given Respondents “should not be harmed or damaged in any way by the research … It is also

important that interviews are not used as a devious means of selling something to the respondent” (Gray, 2009)

It is the role of the researcher to ask questions The questions ought to elicit valid response from respondents (Hoyle et al., 2002)comment that questions have “ … dual goals of motivating the respondent to give full and precise replies while avoiding biases stemming from social desirability, conformity, or other constructs of disinterest.”

We will conduct the interview in an informal and conversational method The interviewer would only ask a few predetermined questions in order to remain as open and adaptable as possible to the nature and priorities of the interviewee, we feel this would allow for the most scope and potential for relevant information

A good interview will get the respondents involved in the process as early as possible The interview should begin with questions about some facts and intersperse these questions throughout the interview The interviewee should focus on the present before turning to the past

or the future The end of the interview should allow respondents to provide any other information

m Expected result

We would expect a different outlook than in the survey, as an interviewee is much more susceptible to emotions than a questionnaire respondent

In terms of manufacturing industries such as Intel, with a higher propensity for outsourcing, we would have difficulty separating fact from opinion The interviewee may feel they will damage the reputation of their employer if negative facts are given, hence not be privy to the information that may be relevant to the questions.Also, their judgments may be affected by their own attachment; their confidence in the operation may be far from the reality However,we do not doubt that the interview would lead to be very valuable results especially in terms of the past and present

This interview would be balance by an interview with a knowledge based business such as Facebook or Twitter who have only recently moved to Ireland These interviews would seek to find the motivations behind these locations and also the propensity for these organisations to move country Weagain feel that the employees would be wary of damaging company reputation but the potential damage would be softened by the fact they have only recently moved here and thus wouldn’t move again for many years

V Research Planning

With the choice of research methods and practices described in IV.Research Design, we proposed the following time table for the research:

Table 1: Research time table

Time Tasks Aim / Comments

December 2013

-March 2014 Secondary research

Obtain more knowledge Find focused point to research intoand to know

how to design survey

1st April 2014

-15th April 2014

Requesting statistics data from Central Statistics Office Design survey Spreading the survey

Sending the survey out as soon as possible

16th April 2014

-June 2014

Analysis of available statistics from Central Statistics Office

Find more focused point to research into and to

know how to design interview

July 2014

-September 2014

Fieldwork1st: Interview

Find more detailed view of organizations toward

IT offshoring Gathering data from the organizations October 2014

-November 2014

Analysis of data from fieldwork1st Gain more insight

December 2014

-February 2014

Fieldwork2nd:

Follow-up Interview

Get data from more focused interview Analyse data to confirm or reject hypothesis

made in previous phases

March 2014

-June 2014 Work on thesis

Synthesize all statistics and knowledge from Literature review, survey, data from Central Statistic Office, and 2 interviews