Globalization

Globalization

Deardoff defines globalization as a word that can mean any or all of the following:

1. The increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services and capital that attracted special attention in the late 1990s.

2. Also used to encompass a variety of other changes that were perceived to occur at about the same time, such as an increased role for large corporations (MNCs) in the world economy and increased intervention into domestic policies and affairs by international institutions such as the IMF, WTO, and World Bank.

3. Among countries outside the United States, especially developing countries, the term sometimes refers to the domination of world economic affairs and commerce by the United States (Deardoff).

Alternate definitions of globalization have slants related to the group or industry defining it. For software development, for instance, globalization can mean the following (Tuffley):

The process of developing, manufacturing, and marketing software products that are intended for worldwide distribution. This term combines two aspects of the work: internationalization (enabling the product to be used without language or culture barriers) and localization (translating and enabling the product for a specific locale (Tuffley).

On the other hand, generalist definitions also include that globalization is

The generalized expansion of international economic activity which includes increased international trade, growth of international investment (foreign investment) and international migration, and increased creation of technology among countries. Globalization is the increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services, labor, and capital (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis).

Advantages and Disadvantages, Effects on Businesses and People

Two opposing camps view globalization as positive and negative socially and economically. On the one hand, the positivists view globalization as mainly a force for good, an engine for increased commerce that spurs greater trade and therefore better living standards for people living in the Third World and even greater wealth for those living in the First World or in the developed nations of the West and Japan. The positivist view also sees that social development and prosperity comes as a result of improved economic conditions of the people. Specific arguments for globalization are that globalization puts into global practice the free trade concept of comparative advantage that makes the utilization of worldwide resources more efficient and to the benefit of a greater majority of the world’s population; that globalization also brings with it the benefits of increased personal and social freedom for different peoples; that many statistics on quality of life and economics point to the overwhelming positive effect of globalization, including reduced poverty levels, increased life expectancy, improved suffrage coverage, and improved levels of literacy (Wikipedia). Globalization is seen as being particularly effective in bringing down poverty levels in developing countries in Asia. In the three biggest Asian countries of China, India and Indonesia, globalization is said to have brought about poverty levels going down from “79 to 27 percent in China, 63 to 42 percent in India, and 55 to 11 percent in Indonesia”, a trend that mirrors the global downward trend in the