Sofia Corelli
“Globalization of the ICT Labour Force” -William Lazonick
This weeks article, titled “Globalization of the ICT Labour Force” is written by William Lazonick. Lazonick got a Ph.D in Economics at Harvard University, where he taught Economics after as well. He currently directs the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. He founded, and is President of, The Academic-Industry Research Network. Lazonick’s research and books are based on social conditions and economic development in emerging economies. He has been awarded many high achievements for his work, including the the 2010 Schumpeter Prize and the Henrietta Larson Award from Harvard Business School for best article in Business History Review in 2010. So, Lazonick clearly has high levels of expertise on the topic.
In this chapter, Lazonick begins by explaining how off-shore jobs used to be ones of low-wages and low-skill levels. However, now he explains them as, “low-wage labour to perform relatively high-skill work.” Because of the increase of information and communication technologies, off-shore labor is in need of higher skilled workers because of the need for knowledge and high levels of interaction with the technologies that they are working with. Many people thought that this type of high-tech work couldn’t be done abroad, but it indeed can. The chapter goes further to explain how East Asia is developing in a way that they acquire US ICT knowledge by coming here for higher education, and then bring it back to their countries in order to expand the global supply of ICT jobs and opportunities. Lazonick talks of a “brain-drain” where all of the East Asians seeking a higher education in ICT are going to America, which is leaving their homelands with minimal opportunities to provide this education. However, nations like Korea are working to reverse the “brain-drain” by creating job opportunities for these highly educated people once they come back home. Lazonick’s big claim is that all of this movement of people from East Asia to America, and then of ICT information back to East Asia, has big implications for the US. In order for the US to remain the leader in ICT, Lazonick believes that it will take academia, industry, and the government all working in collaboration. If not, the US will continue to lose high-wage ICT jobs to off-shore sites.
This Handbook of ICT was received well by the audience. Since it contains the work of 39 authors, all who have made huge and important contributions in the research of ICT, it has great legitimacy and is well respected. For example, Jean-Claude Burgelman, head of Communications and Strategies at IPTS, reviewed the book as “a most impressive OUP Handbook that contains the work of 39 authors, including many who have made substantial and lasting contributions to our understanding of the social science of information and communications technologies.” Each of the 39 authors have written articles in the Handbook of ICT, so the book as a whole gives a full array of opinions and ideas about the topic, Lazonick’s just being one of them.
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