The New Economy – Driven by the Dual Forces of Globalisation and Icts – Has Given Rise to New Forms of International Business That Is Characterised by Decentralisation, a Flattening of Hierarchies, a Growth of Knowledge Work, and Flexibility

Nowadays many academics argue that we are living in the digital age away from the logic of industrialism. At the same time even the most conservative-oriented parts of the public cannot deny the impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on the economy, business and society. Some experts refer to the “new economy” as being weightless, in which the demise of manufacturing is balanced by growth of professional and knowledge work. Together with the rise of new service industries these are changes towards post-industrial era, facilitated by the global interconnectedness. Furthermore, technologies are seen as effective mechanisms for achieving organizational change and giving birth to new business models that prioritize information flows. The old bureaucracies are replaced by networked organizations which promote enhanced flexibility, mobility and higher employee satisfaction. The “death” of distance in the highly globalized world is fuelling the processes of outsourcing and offshoring in searching for the best possible business outcomes. While this quite pervasive utopian view represents perfect “win-win” situation both at the macro- and microeconomic level, it is based on extremely contested pivotal points - the merits of globalization, technological determinism and the concepts of information and network society, epitomised in the new organizational forms. The most heated debate about the origins of the new reality still remains unsettled – is this the brand new economy, representing an epochal change or continuation of the well-established status-quo in the past. Nevertheless, the glorification of technology disregards the broader socio-economic context and the negative IT impacts upon society. The world economy has become not only more volatile and complex but also more tightly connected (Dicken 1986, p.3). It could be described as a system in which new trends are being shaped by the processes of globalization and ICTs. Based on laissez-faire, free