ARTICLE REVIEW

Article Review

Article Review

Bibliography

Czinkota, Michael R., and Ilkka A. Ronkainen. "A forecast of globalization, international business and trade: report from a Delphi study." Journal of World Business 40, no. 2 (May 2005): 1111-123. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed April 24, 2010).

Introduction

This paper presents a critical review of an article with a title of “A forecast of globalization, international business and trade: report from a Delphi study.” Globalization is the most significant change taking place in today's work environment. It connotes the economic interdependence among countries that develops through cross-national flows of goods and services, capital, know-how, and people. According to the authors, globalization is the term used to describe the condition that prevails when communication, people, goods, services, and capital move more freely across borders. Often globalization is the result of technological improvement that facilitates communication and transport and economic liberalization that gives people the freedom to make use of them. It is the most important international phenomenon of the early 21st century, touching almost all aspects of life, politics, and business.

Libertarians have traditionally promoted globalization because of its liberating effects on people's lives. Globalization is an international extension of free markets and open societies. In effect, it is capitalism without borders. In closed societies, people are limited to what is developed locally; they buy locally made products from a local supplier, they work for local employers, and they have to borrow money from the local bank. Globalization permits us to interact with whomever we choose, and to buy from, to work for, or to borrow from others than the local employers and suppliers. These greater horizons permit people the freedom to look for alternatives and the dignity to set their own terms for cooperating with others.

The authors of the article have rightly pointed out toward the fact that globalization also increases material progress. When consumers are able to choose alternatives, domestic businesses are exposed to competition from the world's most efficient alternatives, which forces them to look for ways to make their products and services better and cheaper. It also means that each business and nation is in a position to specialize in producing what it does best, importing other goods from countries where they are more cheaply produced, thus increasing total world production. The corollaries to this material progress are that ideas and technologies are easily transferred across borders and capital is free to move to the places with the most promising ideas and innovations.

In the authors' viewpoint, globalization is particularly important for poor countries. In an open world, they can employ technical and business solutions that took richer countries generations and billions of dollars to develop, they can attract investment from richer nations, and they can sell goods in wealthier markets. This ability to leapfrog entire stages of industrial development explains why countries with open economies governed by the rule of law have grown faster as wealth in the rest of the world has increased. From 1780, it took England 60 years to double its national ...