Team C's Debate on the Growth of Economic Globalization
GMGT520 External Environment of Global Business
Week 5 Team Assignment
TEAM C:
September 17, 2005
Abstract
Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased. Jet airplanes, cheap telephone service, email, computers, huge sea vessels, instant capital flows, all these have made the world more interdependent than ever. Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders. Along with products and finances, ideas and cultures circulate more freely. As a result, laws, economies, and social movements are forming at the international level. Many politicians, academics, and journalists treat these trends as both inevitable and (on the whole) welcome. But for billions people around the world, business-driven globalization means leaving old ways of life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. The global social justice movement, itself a product of globalization, proposes an alternative path, more responsive to public needs. Intense political disputes will continue over globalization's meaning and its future direction. This paper argues the pros and cons of globalization with substantiating evidence that analyzes the implications of this debate on the opportunities and constraints of conducting business globally.
Introduction
In the most general sense, free trade refers to the process in which goods and services, including capital, move more freely within and among nations. As free trade advances, national boundaries become more porous and less relevant. Throug ...