Globalization: Overview, Causes, Effects

Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Put in simple terms, globalization refers to processes that increase world-wide exchanges of national and cultural resources. Advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the telegraph and its posterity the Internet, are major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and cultural activities.
Though several scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history long before the European age of discovery and voyages to the New World. Some even trace the origins to the third millennium BCE. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectedness of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly.
The term globalization has been in increasing use since the mid-1980s and especially since the mid-1990s. In 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people and the dissemination of knowledge. Further, environmental challenges such as climate change, cross-boundary water and air pollution, and over-fishing of the ocean are linked with globalization. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization, economics, socio-cultural resources, and the natural environment.

The term globalization is derived from the word globalize, which refers to the emergence of an international network of social and economic systems. One of the earliest known usages of the term as a noun was in a 1930 publication entitled, Towards New Education, where it denoted a holistic view of human experience in education. A related term, corporate giants, was coined by Charles Taze Russell in 1897 to refer to the largely national trusts and other large enterprises of the time. By the 1960s, both terms began to be used as synonyms by economists and other social scientists. It then reached the mainstream press in the later half of the 1980s. Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations, with antecedents dating back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th century onwards. Due to the complexity of the concept, research projects, articles, and discussions often remain focused on a single aspect of globalization.
Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at University of Aberdeen, an early writer in the field, defined globalization as:
...the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole.
Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as:
...all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society.
In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens uses the following definition:
Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.
In Global Transformations David Held, et al., study the definition of globalization:
Although in its simplistic sense globalization refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnection, such a definition begs further elaboration. ... Globalization can be located on a continuum with the local, national and regional. At one end of the continuum lie social and economic relations and networks which are organized on a local and/or national basis; at the other end lie social and economic relations and networks which crystallize on the wider scale of regional and global interactions. Globalization can be taken to refer to those spatial-temporal processes of change which underpin a transformation in the organization of human affairs by linking together and expanding human activity across regions and continents. Without reference to such expansive spatial connections, there can be no clear or coherent formulation of this term. ... A satisfactory definition of globalization must capture each of these elements: extensity (stretching), intensity, velocity and impact.
Swedish journalist Thomas Larsson, in his book The Race to the Top: The Real Story of Globalization, states that globalization: is the process of world shrinkage, of distances getting shorter, things moving closer. It pertains to the increasing ease with which somebody on one side of the world can interact, to mutual benefit, with somebody on the other side of the world.

Archaic globalization is seen as a phase in the history of globalization conventionally referring to globalizing events and developments from the time of the earliest civilizations until roughly 1600. This term is used to describe the relationships between communities and states and how they were created by the geographical spread of ideas and social norms at both local and regional levels.
In this schema, three main prerequisites are posited for globalization to occur. The first is the idea of Eastern Origins, which shows how Western states have adapted and implemented learned principals from the East. Without the traditional ideas from the East, Western globalization would not have emerged the way it did. The second is distance. The interactions amongst states were not on a global scale and most often were confined to Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and certain parts of Europe. With early globalization it was difficult for states to interact with others that were not within close proximity. Eventually, technological advances allowed states to learn of others existence and another phase of globalization was able to occur. The third has to do with interdependency, stability and regularity. If a state is not depended on another then there is no way for them to be mutually affected by one another. This is one of the driving forces behind global connections and trade; without either globalization would not have emerged the way it did and states would still be dependent on their own production and resources to function. This is one of the arguments surrounding the idea of early globalization. It is argued that archaic globalization did not function in a similar manner to modern globalization because states were not as interdependent on others as they are today.
Also posited is a 'multi-polar' nature to archaic globalization, which involved the active participation of non-Europeans. Because it predated the Great Divergence of the nineteenth century, in which Western Europe pulled ahead of the rest of the world in terms of industrial production and economic output, archaic globalization was a phenomenon that was driven not only by Europe but also by other economically developed Old World centers such as Gujurat, Bengal, coastal China and Japan.
Over many centuries, human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts. Recently, the pace of global integration has dramatically increased. Unprecedented changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology have given the process new impetus and 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.
'Globalization'
The tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the interconnectedness of different markets. Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing not only international trade, but also cultural exchange. The advantages and disadvantages of globalization have been heavily scrutinized and debated in recent years. Proponents of globalization say that it helps developing nations "catch up" to industrialized nations much faster through increased employment and technological advances. Critics of globalization say that it weakens national sovereignty and allows rich nations to ship domestic jobs overseas where labor is much cheaper.
The worldwide movement toward economic, financial, trade, and communications integration.
Globalization implies the opening of local and nationalistic perspectives to a broader outlook of an interconnected and interdependent world with free transfer of capital, goods, and services across national frontiers. However, it does not include unhindered movement of labor and, as suggested by some economists, may hurt smaller or fragile economies if applied indiscriminately.
Globalization is a series of social, economical, technological, cultural, and political changes that promote interdependence and growth. Globalization raises the standard of living in developing countries, spreads technological knowledge, and increases political liberation. The main cause of globalization is influence from other, more developed, countries.
Globalization, a great number of people regard it as a chiefly economic phenomenon, necessitating the additional integration, or interaction, of nationally based economic entities through the development of international trade, investment and monetary flows. Also included in this view is the rapid advances in sharing social and cultural values as well as new technologies as the world grows together.

Causes and effects of Globalization

First of all Globalization is a positive thing and it benefits a country, for example, specializes in a certain product and then exchange that good with other countries. But it does not only have positive aspects also the disadvantages have to be noticed in regard to this topic.
Economic integration and free trade conditions have produced an unstoppable movement towards economic globalization. Most economists applaud the trend, pointing to the modernization and growing wealth that have resulted. But many countries have been forgotten or have even been harmed by globalization. So what have been the positive and negative effects of this globalization trend?

First of all the principal cause and effect of globalization is international trade, which has expanded substantially. A growing trade has often been followed by higher economic growth, although not in all cases. For example: Annual growth rates of GDP in East and Southeast Asia were 6-8 and in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa they averaged less than half a percent per year.

On the other hand there is the unemployment effect. While growing trade has general created more jobs, the parallel growth in competition has forced many companies to fire their workers in order to cut costs, boost efficiency and increase profits. Especially some less-developed countries had to deal with this negative effect. China, which has experienced a strong economic growth in the last years, has begun to struggle with unemployment, particularly in urban areas. So it becomes obvious that globalization is also accompli by negative aspects.

Another point which should be considered when talking about globalization is the income distribution. Experts suggest that the increased trade between North and South has reduced income inequality among skilled and semi-skilled workers in the South. On the other hand it has increased the inequality among such workers in the North. This is because manufactured exports from the South raise demand and wages for workers with only limited skills and education. But the effect in the North is the opposite. There the service and technology industries pay top wages to highly skilled workers but have little use for semi-skilled labor.

There are a lot of other fields where it becomes clear that globalization is followed by a lot of advantages, but also disadvantages. Overall it can be said that globalization appears to have deepened inequalities in the international distribution of income.

Economy

The international economy has also become more globalized in recent decades. International trade is vital to the economies of most countries around the world. American software companies, such as Microsoft, rely on international trade to make large profits. The economy of the country of Saudi Arabia is almost entirely dependent on oil exports.

To increase trade, many countries have created free trade agreements with other countries. Under free trade agreements, countries agree to remove trade barriers. For example, they may stop charging tariffs, or taxes, on imports. In 1994, the United States, Mexico, and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which eventually ended all tariffs on trade goods between the three nations. This allowed globalization of goods and services, as well as people and ideas, between these three countries.

Most large corporations operate in many countries around the world. HSBC, the world’s largest bank, has offices in 88 different countries. Originally, HSBC stood for Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, which was founded in 1865 to promote trade between China and the United Kingdom. Today, HSBC has its headquarters in London, England.

Economic globalization has allowed many corporations based in the West to move factories and jobs to less economically developed countries, a process called outsourcing. The corporation can pay lower wages, because the standard of living in less developed countries is much lower. Laws protecting the environment and workers’ safety are less widespread in developing countries, which also lowers costs for the corporation. Often, this results in lower costs for consumers, too.

Economic markets are global. People and organizations invest in companies all over the globe. Because of this, economic downturns in one country are repeated in other countries. The financial crisis that began in the United States in 2006 quickly spread around the world. The way globalization allowed this situation to spread led to the nation of Iceland nearly going bankrupt, for example.

Reference http://www.globalization101.org/what-is-globalization http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/globalization/?ar_a=1 http://laboureconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/causes-and-effects-of-globalization-6/ http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/list-advantages-disadvantages-globalization-113517

University of Perpetual Help System Laguna
College of Engineering & Tech. Voc.

“GLOBALIZATION”
Assignment in Principles of Economics

DE GUZMAN, Edralyn A. Aug. 6, 2013
E3I

Engr. Marcelo T. Ramos Jr.
Professor