Executive Pay: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn’s Arrest
February 12, 2025
Donald Trump has positioned himself to be a populist leader. Although in reality, he is an opportunist leader. He has promised his voters that he will stop outsourcing and protect their jobs from cheap foreign labor. Most political pundits did not believe Trump will be able to achieve anything of that sort. After all, even […]
Introduction: What is IT Strategy and Why it is Important As the joke goes, A person who is sitting in front of a computer and not knowing what to do has been described as Intel Inside and Idiot Outside. Similarly, organizations that do not have an IT strategy in place are akin to clueless organizations […]
According to many respected commentators like Nouriel Roubini and Joseph Stiglitz, the Global Economy is facing severe headwinds which can culminate in a “Global Perfect Storm” in beginning 2013. The term perfect storm refers to the coming together of extreme weather conditions that culminate to produce a storm of such a magnitude as never seen […]
Many of you would have read about the dramatic events of the last two days pertaining to the Indian IT (Information Technology) bellwether and behemoth, Infosys, which was played out in the public domain and which culminated in the resignation of its first non-founder chairperson, Vishal Sikka, amidst allegations of malfeasance of corporate governance and […]
North Korea has always been perceived by the world as a rogue nation. Their aggressiveness became even more apparent when North Korea threatened President Donald Trump and America with a nuclear war. The standoff has led to another round of economic sanctions by the United States. The North Korean dictator has called these sanctions an […]
The famous author and cheerleader for globalization, Thomas Friedman, in his book The World is Flat identified some key drivers of globalization. He called these factors the flatteners to denote the premise of the book that these factors were responsible for the flattening of the world.
In other words, globalization has ensured that all countries with minimum infrastructure and educated workforces have the same entry level meaning that there are no “walls” or barriers to trade and hence the world is flat.
These flatteners or drivers of globalization include:
If we take the first driver of globalization, the integration of the global economy has mainly been due to the rapid spread of IT and communications that enabled countries like India and China to circumvent hitherto aspects that were holding them back.
In other words, the increasing interconnectedness was driven by real time communication between the West and the East which enabled these countries to reach out to wider markets and audiences in the Western countries. The classic example in this regard is India that has managed to tap into the booming market for IT and process outsourcing. As the next paragraph points out, China leveraged the spread of IT and communications technologies in a different manner.
Further, the fact that China became a manufacturing powerhouse is largely due to the fact that though the country is still lagging behind in English speaking populace, it has been able to leverage the shift in jobs from the West to the East.
The point here is that with IT, Communications and English spreading rapidly, India was able to leapfrog the Industrialization phase of Globalization whereas China drew strength from its youthful population as well as the tendency for business leaders in the West to look for ways and means of cutting costs.
The way in which western businesses invested in physical infrastructure to support the communications revolution during the dotcom bubble made the process of integration of the world economy easier.
The point here is that after the dotcom bubble burst, there was excess capacity in the broadband infrastructure which meant that communications costs came down drastically. This is also proved by the rapid spread of mobile technologies in Africa, India and China that attests to the trend described here.
Finally, since a major proportion of the world’s population was fluent in English, many of these countries could communicate with the West effectively as well as ensure that they understand the technical and financial aspects of the Western form of capitalism.
In the case of China, the managers and the upper levels of its industries and companies were conversant with the Western methods of doing business that helped its cause greatly.
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