Offshore outsourcing

In 2006 the influential U.S Council on Foreign Relation's publication Foreign Affairs featured an article by Alan Blinder titled 'Offshoring: the Next Industrial Revolution?'. Offshoring refers to business processes that were originally performed 'in-house' being moved overseas. Blinder (2006:114) noted that 'We have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimension of which may be staggering'. The next Industrial Revolution" the Information Age" revolves around advances in information technology that make many services now tradeable via the flow of packets of digitized information. Services that are easily delivered electronically can be moved offshore while those that continue to rely on personal face-to-face contact will remain non-tradeable. Within a firm this distinguishes front-office services involving direct customer contact that remains in-house with back-office services that may be performed" outsourced" in overseas locations.