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May 24, 2006
"HRbitrage" in Action
I want to point back to one of Mike's postings for a second time--not because there's anything new there, but because it's important context for the rest of my post today.
Mike's a former CFO. His point, simply put, is that HR has discovered arbitrage. (He explains this in his post.) He asks, rhetorically, what I think of the global implications.
In my prior post on this I punted, saying that I wasn't crazy about arbitrage of human capital. And to be completely candid, I should probably add that while I certainly "get" the business rationale, even the faintly oxymoronic antagonism baked in to the term "human capital" seems to say far more than it intends (as does the hubris--our shared hubris--of aspiring to human capital managment).
But today's New York Times ran a cover story on the real cost of this practice in action. Here's the opening paragraph:
As the United States runs short of nurses, senators are looking abroad. A little-noticed provision in their immigration bill would throw open the gate to nurses and, some fear, drain them from the world's developing countries.
The article goes on to say that, "public health experts in poor countries...reacted with dismay...coupled with doubt that their nurses would resist the magnetic pull of the United States, which sits at the pinnacle of the global labor market for nurses."
Arbitrage, or sabotage? You decide. Whatever you think, though, it's worth noting that this was today's most emailed article.
Posted by davidkippen at May 24, 2006 09:41 PM