Introduction
In 2003, Nicholas Carr wrote an article that made huge waves in the business world called “IT Doesn’t Matter”. The article’s main premise is that modern IT has evolved into a necessary infrastructure, that it no longer serves the purpose of giving companies a distinct competitive edge, but remains a necessary commodity (Carr, 2003). The paper highlights the business trend adopted by many companies, that of saving resources by moving away from internally developed software and adopting pre-existing software and support that has already been designed to be customized to fit their specific needs.
Problem Statement
Recently, IT has been shifting from being an asset companies own to a service that they purchase (Carr, 2005). Where …show more content…
Furthermore, they made the laid off employees train the people who would be replacing them. Soon after, some of the affected employees filed a lawsuit against Disney, alleging that they colluded with an outsourcing firm to break the law by bringing in these replacement employees using the H1-B program, knowing that Americans would be displaced, while stating the contrary (Preston, 2016). This short-sighted attempt to save money, while appearing beneficial on paper, will end up costing considerably more in the long run. Lawsuits and potential monetary damages aside, the amount of institutional knowledge and experience possessed by nearly three hundred employees with an average of a decade on the job each is staggering, and all but impossible to effectively transfer within a short few months. Furthermore, the amount of bad press that Disney has received because of this action will cost them, both monetarily and in the form of lowered employee morale and customer goodwill, and will make it more difficult to attract and retain quality employees in other sectors of their company. In another example, Southern California Edison (SCE), California’s largest utility company recently laid off or caused to resign nearly 500 employees, while making them train their replacements in order to receive a severance package (Thibodeau, 2015). While SCE was …show more content…
Companies should instead focus on treating IT departments as assets, rather than expenses, and on automation. By investing in employees, and focusing on researching, developing, and implementing a successful plan to identify tasks that can be automated, companies can expect to continue to maintain a competitive edge over their
In 2003, Nicholas Carr wrote an article that made huge waves in the business world called “IT Doesn’t Matter”. The article’s main premise is that modern IT has evolved into a necessary infrastructure, that it no longer serves the purpose of giving companies a distinct competitive edge, but remains a necessary commodity (Carr, 2003). The paper highlights the business trend adopted by many companies, that of saving resources by moving away from internally developed software and adopting pre-existing software and support that has already been designed to be customized to fit their specific needs.
Problem Statement
Recently, IT has been shifting from being an asset companies own to a service that they purchase (Carr, 2005). Where …show more content…
Furthermore, they made the laid off employees train the people who would be replacing them. Soon after, some of the affected employees filed a lawsuit against Disney, alleging that they colluded with an outsourcing firm to break the law by bringing in these replacement employees using the H1-B program, knowing that Americans would be displaced, while stating the contrary (Preston, 2016). This short-sighted attempt to save money, while appearing beneficial on paper, will end up costing considerably more in the long run. Lawsuits and potential monetary damages aside, the amount of institutional knowledge and experience possessed by nearly three hundred employees with an average of a decade on the job each is staggering, and all but impossible to effectively transfer within a short few months. Furthermore, the amount of bad press that Disney has received because of this action will cost them, both monetarily and in the form of lowered employee morale and customer goodwill, and will make it more difficult to attract and retain quality employees in other sectors of their company. In another example, Southern California Edison (SCE), California’s largest utility company recently laid off or caused to resign nearly 500 employees, while making them train their replacements in order to receive a severance package (Thibodeau, 2015). While SCE was …show more content…
Companies should instead focus on treating IT departments as assets, rather than expenses, and on automation. By investing in employees, and focusing on researching, developing, and implementing a successful plan to identify tasks that can be automated, companies can expect to continue to maintain a competitive edge over their