Globalization and Business It Reflective Journal

Globalization and Business IT

Reflective Journal

No one could imagine who was the first one that I said I want to marry him. The answer is Donald Duck. I am not kidding, when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I got to know there is a very funny duck whose name is Donald even before I had the idea of the place where Donald Duck comes from is called United States of America. I start watching cartoons like Transformers and Tom and Jerry much earlier than I had my first hamburger in McDonalds in my life when I was 5 years old. Although almost 20 years away from my first hamburger, I can clearly remember I really hated the taste of the Big Mac. But Big Mac didn't stop its pace to get into the Chinese market and I didn't stop eating Big Mac neither. I cannot stop the expanding of McDonalds' just because I don't like it, neither can't I stop the world getting smaller and smaller.

After McDonalds had come into our life, more and more foreign products or brands appeared in our surrounding. When I was composing this journal had my headset on and listening to the music in different languages. If I want to take a break my choice for entertainment goes from anime from Japanese to movies from Hollywood, and I have to think about what am I going to have for dinner with my friends, are we going to have pizza in an Italian restaurant or traditional Chinese food at Chinatown. Too much choice makes me feel dazzling.

Indeed, before I have the sense of globalization already influenced my life, I thought the world is so big and wished someday I can travel around the world to see how it looks like. At the time, Australia is a sheen country only shown in TV set or books for me. When I set my foot on to this land, I realized that it is only 9 hours flying time away from my home in China. There was one thing happened makes me start thinking about the word "Globalization", which was when I sitting at my desk and talking with my friends through internet, my two other best friends just like me, one choose to study in the USA and the other was in the UK. This was really an amazing experience that we located in different time zone but talked like we can have a cup of tea together when we were in China.

As it has come into mind, I kept thinking about what "Globalization" exactly is. But I soon discovered that globalization is a progress more than a concept. Globalization has been defined by a lot of people and from the business perspective globalization can be defined as a business integration of all nations in the world. From a generalized perspective, globalization represents a process through which can bring all segments of world get together. People can communicate, travel and trade in a more freedom way, as a result of different factors like culture, economics and politics. As Friedman wrote in his book "Globalization is not a phenomenon. It is not just some passing trend. Today it is an overarching international system shaping the domestic politics and foreign relations of virtually every country, and we need to understand it as such."

Ever since the silk road, which was the earliest international trading activity in ancient China, people start their international business. Columbus declared the world is round by sailing towards west when he found the "Indians" other than "India". However Friedman (2005) had written in his book "the world is flat", when he noticed "The playing field is being leveled". No one would doubt that the world is getting smaller and smaller as the saying goes "world has become a global village". New technology has brought people together and the world is getting integrated in more than the economies. Globalization makes the earth planarization, the culture, legal, political and social are more or less have been changed accompanied by some challenges. People are mingling with each other like never before. Indians have a huge amount of call centers which provide service for most western companies. They have being trained how to make a barrier-free communication with their clients.

Although globalization created the worldwide market, and brought incredible wealth to investors, still some people don't like it. Take it into deep thinking, as a coin has two sides, it can have both good and bad effects. From my point of view, I can hardly say the globalization is not good, thanks to the globalization I am able to have the chance to enjoy a different education system overseas. What is the negative for globalization?

In order to cut the cost down, businessmen choose to set up their manufacturing part in the developing countries due to the cheaper labor cost like India and China. Reddy and Vyas (2004) indicated that outsourcing took away the working chance in developed countries. Generally speaking there are two kind of value-added works, one is higher and the other is relatively low. Companies always try to find the lowest labor which makes considerable profits. Those employees who are doing the works which may be outsourced overseas may have to worry about they will lose the job. And this makes the people who work in developed counties under great pressure. As I state before, some service for western counties like call center have been moved to India, but these service cannot meet with the customers' expectation in the developed countries. This can cause extra animosity among people who go against outsourcing.

Seems like only developed countries suffering the negatives brought by globalization, but far more than that, developing nations have their own words. In the developing countries, globalization may have side effects go along with the increasing economies. They often complain with the high level of pollution and the industrial waste which are affecting their living environment. Stiglitz (2002), the Nobel Prize Winner in Economics wrote "successful economic programs require extreme care in sequencing--the order in which reforms occur--and pacing". If a country starts globalization too early, then the speed of creating new jobs could not match the speed of losing old jobs. So globalization would not bring prosperity but increase poverty to these countries.

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