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International Trade Investment Information Technology Environment Culture Economic Development Human Physical Well-Being

Globalization is a process of increasing integration and interaction between people, companies, and governments around the world through international trade and investment, aided by technology. This current era of globalization is characterized by faster, farther-reaching, and deeper connections globally compared to previous eras. Governments have reduced trade barriers and established international agreements to promote cross-border commerce, while companies have built foreign operations to take advantage of new opportunities. Advances in information technology have also transformed economic activity by enabling faster analysis of global trends and collaboration across borders. However, globalization remains controversial as some argue it benefits multinational corporations more than local enterprises and communities.

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Moona Malik
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24 views

International Trade Investment Information Technology Environment Culture Economic Development Human Physical Well-Being

Globalization is a process of increasing integration and interaction between people, companies, and governments around the world through international trade and investment, aided by technology. This current era of globalization is characterized by faster, farther-reaching, and deeper connections globally compared to previous eras. Governments have reduced trade barriers and established international agreements to promote cross-border commerce, while companies have built foreign operations to take advantage of new opportunities. Advances in information technology have also transformed economic activity by enabling faster analysis of global trends and collaboration across borders. However, globalization remains controversial as some argue it benefits multinational corporations more than local enterprises and communities.

Uploaded by

Moona Malik
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people,

companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven


by international trade and investment and aided by information technology.
This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political
systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical
well-being in societies around the world.

Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and,


later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in
lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across
Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages.
Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in
enterprises in other countries.

But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have
spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large
that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new
phase in its economic development. Since 1950, for example, the volume
of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows
of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion.
Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author
Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster,
cheaper, and deeper.”

This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have
opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the
Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many
governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly
increasing their own productive potential and creating new opportunities for
international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated
dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established
international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and
investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets,
corporations have built foreign factories and established production and
marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of
globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business
structure.

Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances


in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed
economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual
economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools
for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and
more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy
transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.

Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization


argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop
economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of
globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free
market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the
expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people.
Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular
and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the
flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of
globalization.

To find the right balance between benefits and costs associated with
globalization, citizens of all nations need to understand how globalization
works and the policy choices facing them and their societies.
Globalization101.org tries to provide an accurate analysis of the issues and
controversies regarding globalization, without the slogans or ideological
biases generally found in discussions of the topics. We welcome you to our
website.

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