Offshoring is not the panacea : ensuring sustainable employment in the US manufacturing industry by leveraging demand proximity

This thesis investigates the theme of "manufacturing offshoring" that became a political issue during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. As during previous elections, employment became a key focus on the home front. Whereas the 1992 presidential election was marked by the debate around the loss of manufacturing jobs due to NAFTA, the 2004 election focused on both manufacturing and services jobs lost due to offshoring to low cost countries. For the first time, well paying jobs, such as IT programming, were outsourced to emerging countries like India or China. Offshoring of "white collar" jobs became the focus of academic, consultant, and journalist discussions in U.S., whereas offshoring of manufacturing activities generated comparatively less interest. For decades offshoring of manufacturing activities to low cost countries was used by American companies to either reduce production cost or to avoid high tariffs on exports. Offshoring strategy was historically applied in labor intensive industries, such as the apparel and electronics sectors. On the other hand, the influence of offshoring on high-tech industries was assumed to be limited. However, with the fast technological development of China and India, this paradigm might change quickly.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Bartolin, Alexandre (Alexandre Fernand Sauveur)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Yossi Sheffi and John Williams.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35705

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35705