Overview of Five Articles About Globalization

Globalization is the process of greater interdependence among countries and their citizens. It consists of increased integration of product and resource market across nations via trade, immigration and foreign investment. Via international flows of goods and services, of people and of investment such as equipment, factories stocks and bonds. It also includes noneconomic elements such as cultural and the environment. Globalization refers to the shift toward a more integrated and interdependent world economy. Organizations must compete on a global basis

Falling trade barriers make it easier to sell globally. Consumers’ tastes and preferences are converging on some global norm. Firms promote the trend by offering the same basic products worldwide. Technology advancement especially in telecommunication and transportation make it easier for globalization of market, products and production.

Organizations have many ways to become involved internationally, some of these are, outsourcing, and exporting, licensing and foreign direct investment. Outsourcing refers to the sourcing of goods and services from location around the global to take advantage of national differences in the cost and quantity of factors of production. By doing this, the firm can reduce their cost of production, Promote efficiency in production, become more competitive in the international marketplace. Exporting means the goods and services are produced in a country in which particular country achieved absolute advantage and transfer those goods to another country for sale. Licensing is enabling a company to produce and market a product in another country. Franchising is one kind of licensing .Direct investing is another kind of globalization. In this case an organization invests in another country because of cheap labor and cheap resources. For example Japanese company invests in Malaysia for cheap labor and raw materials.

This Success is determined by global HR strategies. The basic management function of planning, controlling, organizing and leading is same whether the company is operated domestically or internationally. It is challenging to operate business in multiple countries. The international business management refers businesses are operated more than one countries. International human-resource management addresses the added complexity of managing diverse people globally. The human recourses management needs to consider a lot of key factor before globalize their organization. These includes the economic environment(economic development, infrastructure, resource And product market, per capita income, exchange rate, economic condition),legal-political(political risk, Government takeover, Tariffs, quotas, taxes, terrorism, political instability, laws and regulation), Sociocultural (social values, beliefs, language, religion).Mangers must adapt with the cultures in which countries they are operating their business, they must understand the ways to provide proper leadership, decision making, motivation, and control vary in different cultures.

Article No-1

The article “Impact of Globalization on Human Resource Management” by Oyeyemi Kayode,is related to” The global environment” by Richard L Daft.

According to the article, the increasing prevalence of globalization is driven by a number of factors, including shortage of talent in developing countries, global market forces, technological forces, global cost forces. The pace of globalization is increasing continuously in terms of markets for goods and services, investment and business opportunities within one or more organizations. This transformation caused by globalization affects all the department in an organization in which human resource management is not left out in this transformation crusade as it has obligation to move along with the changing demands of the globalization process. The impact of the workforce on Human Resource Management either locally or internationally also it revealed the various factors driving globalization in the workforce and the issues and challenges that confront the Human Resource Management in the global markets.

There is tremendous growth potential in the global markets which resulted in intensified foreign competition in local markets which forces the small-and-medium-sized companies to upgrade their operations and even consider expanding internationally.There has also been growth in demand which necessitates the development of a global network of manufacturing bases and markets, when the markets are global, the production - planning task of the manager becomes difficult on one hand and allows more efficient utilization of resources on the others. Product diversity has increased as products have grown and global low-cost manufacturing locations have emerged. Global Cost Forces product and process conformance quality, delivery reliability and All these realizations placed access to skilled workers and quality suppliers high on the priority list for firms competing on quality. A number of high technology industries have experienced dramatic growth in the capital intensity of production facilities.

As Daft describes in “The Global Environment”, a borderless world, means organizations want to sell their products globally, as there is a growing demand for their products in other countries. Also if they build their production plant in developing countries, they can take advantage of low cost labor which make them more competitive in global market .For example, Japanese made product will be more expensive than Malaysian made product, so Japanese product cannot compete with Malaysian product. This factor leads a Japanese company to build firm to some low cost country to take the advantage of factor endowment. Also in some developing countries there is demand for some goods but due to the lack of technological advancement they cannot produce the desired goods and service in that case global organization build their firm in those particular countries. The raw materials is also a factor in some cases, if the raw materials have to import from other country which increases the production cost, so the firm cannot compete with other firm which does not need to import the raw materials. In some cases consumer demand for a particular brand, this also lead a product to be globalized. So if we consider the article, the writer describes the same thing as Daft describe about Globalization.

As the writer describe about human resource and corporate culture in his article, the national boundaries as multinational or global enterprise improve global competitiveness and empower employees for global corporate cultural differences and invest in human management issues that are particular for the global enterprise. The common corporate culture is crucial for the global organization. The organization cannot act the same way around the globe when the corporate culture is different. On the other hand, the development of the common corporate culture is difficult. The nations are different. The HR role is to set up the international team, which develops the unified corporate culture and corporate values. It is not easy to introduce the global mobility, but the global organization needs global managers, who are able to run different a strong global Human Resources. Managers must be trained in global policies, and they have to be managed from managers into the global world of the organization.

If we consider, “The Global Environment” by Daft, regarding human resource management and corporate culture, he describe the management is the crucial human capital to operate the business globally. Because they need to understand global strategy as they are not operating the business in their home country. They also need to understand the culture of that particular country. Because different country has their own culture. For example, If an American manager try to adapt his own culture in Malaysia, his Malaysian employee will take it differently. So the global manager should be trained accordingly. Now if we consider the article, it is as same as Daft said.

Article N0-2

The article “Asian management research needs more self-confidence: reflection on Hofstede and beyond” by Tony Fang, is related to” The global environment” by Richard L Daft.

According to Tony, Hofstede masterful capacity to elaborate the complex phenomenon of culture in simple and measurable terms explains his enormous popularity. This article is about the reflection and perception of the writer, Tony Fang to Hofstede’s article (2007) in APJM’s 25th anniversary issue. Tony thinks that Hofstede paradigm with its focus on cultural differences can hardly capture today’s new cross-cultural management environment characterized by change and paradox in borderless and wireless cultural learning, knowledge transfer and synchronized information sharing( globalization). He argues that there is a need to move beyond the Hofstede paradigm if today’s borderless and wireless cross-cultural management has a chance to be understood and theorized. Tony discussed the concept of Ying Yang and its implications for understanding cultural dynamics in the age of globalization. He also emphasized that Asian management researchers need to learn from the West but at the same time need to have self-confidence and courage in using indigenous knowledge to make contributions to theory building with global relevance.

The Hofstede (2007) article aims to explore “general characteristics of Asian management as opposed to management elsewhere, and what the study of Asian management and its cultural origins mean for the emerging Asian multinationals and for the state of the art in management research worldwide in the 21st century” the article discussed 3 major themes, first is the continuity of management problems over time, second is differences in management problems across countries and last what is Asian management. Hofstede is consistent with his earlier writings about culture and it provides a nutshell of the Hofstede paradigm which is based on at least 6 assumptions. The six assumptions are including the complex phenomenon of culture can be tackled through implication and stereotyping, nation-state or nationality is adopted as the basic unit of analysis, culture and management skills are viewed as country-specific phenomena, cultures can be analyzed in terms of four or five cultural dimensions along which each national culture is given a fixed indexing, emphasizes that value determines and prevails over behavior and not the other way around and finally the last one is culture is stable over time because values are difficult to change over time.

I think Tony article is relating to “The global environment” by Daft. This is because “The global environment” by Daft has mentioned about socio cultural value dimension by Hofstede, the book make me know Hofstede for the first time and I wish to explore more about Hofstede theory and finally i found this interesting article. Ya, I agree with Tony that argue with the Hofstede nearly article (2007)which Hofstede is consistent with his earlier writing about culture to be apply in today globalization world. I think that Hofstede paradigm is hardly capturing today’s new cross-cultural management environment. On the other hand, some changes and decision is only suitable to be used in West but not Asian. Some changes have to make to produce a better management skill. Tony introduced the concept Yin Yang to be used or apply in Asian management.

According to Tony, Asian philosophies and changing Asian institutional and cultural contexts can serve as an important source of inspiration for cross-cultural theory building. Asian thought and management is fundamentally characterized by “both-and” dialectical thinking and change mentality. Whereas in the west issues tend towards classification on a bipolar “either-or “basis, this is seldom the case in Asian cultures. In Asian, when asked whether they are feminine or masculine, whether they are collectivistic or individualistic, and whether they are reserved or expressive, for example, Asians would often to be confused because they believe they can be both depending on situation, context and time.

Yin Yang is arguably the best –known symbol in East Asia. Yin represent female energy and Yang represent male energy. Yin Yang cannot survive without each other, and they complement each other, depend on each other at different points in time, all in the process of ceaseless change and transformation. The Yin Yang philosophy empowers Asians to perceive culture essentially as a dialectical and changing environment full of paradoxical value and behavioral orientations. This dialectic ,holistic, and changing perspective of culture inspired from Yin Yang differs philosophically from the static and bipolarized vision of culture advocated by the Hofstede paradigm. Drawing on Yin Yang and dialectical thinking and using “+ve” and “-ve” to symbolize paradoxical values, respectively, Fang ( 2005-2006) proposes that if there exist “ +ve” in a national culture, there must coexist “-ve” in the same culture depending on situation, context and time. A balanced culture embraces both Yin and Yang ; a balanced culture is both feminine and masculine ,both long-term and short-term, both individualistic and collectivistic, both monochromic and polychromic ,depending on situation ,context and time.

Lastly, I have to say that I think changes and improvement should be made from time to time, especially in the globalization era now. We should not resists on one theory ( Hofstede paradigm) and ignore other theory or concept. Hofstede maintains that his research “ does not represent a finished theory” and he encourages us to continue our “exploration” to “serve the understanding of cultural differences and the improvement of intercultural communication and cooperation, which the world will increasingly and forever need,” these encouraging comments should be taken as an impetus for us to catch up and move on.

Article No-3

Globalization of Human Resource Management: A Cross-cultural Perspective for the Public Sector – by Dr Pan Suk Kim,

According to the article, international environments are changing rapidly. Foreign competitive and the need to trade more effectively overseas have forced most corporations and government to become increasingly culturally sensitive and globally minded. Global competitive conditions are presently affected by a rapid internationalization of service businesses, much of it, again, driven by the emergence of new boundary-crossing technologies.

Globalization implies accepting that cultural diversity in management composition and management style contributes to the competitive advantage of the global agency. Global human resource management provides an organized framework for developing and managing people who are comfortable with the strategic and operational paradoxes embedded in global organizations and who are capable of managing cultural diversity.

To survive in the 21st century, agencies must adapt a global mindset and transform leadership to be globally competitive. Global leaders must learn not only customs, courtesies, and protocols of their counterparts from other countries; they must also understand the national culture and mindsets of the peoples. According to Hofstede, culture refers to the collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

Negotiation is a process in which two or more entities discuss common, as well as conflicting interests in order to reach an agreement of mutual benefit. Fisher addresses five considerations for analyzing cross-cultural negotiations which are the players and the situations, styles of decision making, national character, cross-cultural noise, and interpreter and translators. The negotiator should discover what the foreign negotiator expects and then provide a tension-free environment that encourages cooperation and problem-solving. Next negotiator can find ways to influence a foreign agency’s decision by analyzing its organizational culture and structuring arguments to fit within established guidelines. Factors such as gesture, personal proximity, and office surrounding may unintentionally interfere with communication. There are limitations in translating certain ideas, concept, meaning, and nuance. Thus, a negotiator will try to communicate a concept or idea that simply does not exist in the counterpart’s culture.

Equipping executives with a global mindset is one of the key strategic tasks facing human resource management in global organizations. The successful training of future leaders of global organizations requires a radical transformation of thinking about the basics premises of human resource development techniques. Traditional training and development approaches fall short of what is required for globalization. Albert Bandura asserts that we learn through the interaction of four elements: attention, retention, reproduction, and incentives including the motivation processes.

Globalization demands new ways of thinking. Transformation, multiple interpretation, and alternative patterning become the basis for understanding and constructing meanings in cross-cultural encounter. Therefore, a new teaching methods and a new version of curriculum should be developed in the era of globalization. The globalization public administration school curriculum would be organized in a way that is different from any other traditional school currently in operation. The key characteristics of a globalized public administration school should include culture exposure, comparative, problem-centered, flexibility in timing, multilingual, team building, faculty development and exchange, and textbook and case study development.

Now if we consider the article and Daft`s “The Global Environment” regarding human resources management it is similar because Daft mention that, organization must trained their management when they operate their business in other country, managing cross culturally. For example a European manager works in his own country in an individual manner but when working China have to be collectivism manner.

Article No-4

The article “Globalisation and Its Influence on Strategic Human Resource

Management, Competitive Advantage and Organisational Success” by Deepika Faugoo , is related to the “The global environment” by Richard L Daft.

Globalization describes that world trade, culture and technologies have become rapidly integrated. The phenomena of globalization are the change from cyber revolution to trade liberalization, worldwide homogenization of consumer product and services and export oriented growth. Economic, political, cultural and sociological nature all are the factors allied with globalization. Multinational corporations carry out trade on a global basis and their main concerns are fewer trade barriers, profit maximization, satisfying customer. The forces of globalization emphasis on competitiveness, increasing the number of the women become to be a work force, work force become more mobile and diverse then there have flexible work. Globalization is often portrayed that means intensified competition and continuing technological innovation that to stress the important of product quality and customer care. It meets some challenge that competition organizations have been downsized and this challenge subsequently lead to many developments in human resource management (HRM). The important of human competitiveness are increasing realizing because of the organisation and institutions.

Competitive advantage is producing by the perspective of strategic HRM like tacit knowledge, skills and talent. It will enable an organisation to capitalize on opportunities in the market place and avoid threats to its desired position. HR attracting and retaining individuals with skills related to the core competencies of the organization. HR functions like staffing, performance appraisals, training and development, rewards and career planning practices in a dynamic competitive environment. Personal dynamics ensuring that the employees devote to the goals of the company through attention to reward systems, communications, encouragement and career development. Personal being receptive to employee ideas and preparing employees for the new skills demanded by training cross fertilization and job enrichment.The forces of globalization and rapid change have impacted all the organizations involved in the study to steer away from the hierarchical and directive management approaches that traditionally typified their countries corporate cultures to create more flexible styles that can cope with change.

In this article, we can consider that human resource management is known as the era of rapid change and effective human resource management practices play a competitive advantage and organizational performance was positively correlated.If the organisations want to operate on a global basis and they want to survive in international markets when in the times of rapid,unprecedented change, the HRM are very necessary to them.For the example,French, German and Indian global companies illustrate that organisations are responding to the challenges posed by globalisation and rapid changeby adopting more flexible and participative ways of working and highlight the importanceof people and their effective management as a means towards enhancing competitiveadvantage and organisational success.

Now,if we consider what Daft said in his ”The Global Environment”, About Globalization is that, Falling trade barriers make it easier to sell globally. Consumers’ tastes and preferences are converging on some global norm. Firms promote the trend by offering the same basic products worldwide. Technology advancement especially in telecommunication and transportation make it easier for globalization of market, products and production. Some organization want to be globalized their company by exporting their goods and service, some use the licensing strategy ,some use outsourcing to make them more competitive and so on. When an organization is global they also need to understand global culture, norms and values because different countries have different cultures, for example Asian culture is not as same as Western cultures. So the management needs to provide their Human resources cross cultural training as required. So if we argue with the article it is crystal clear that everyone will agree that it is same with the Daft`s “The Global Environment”

Article No-5

This article discussed about globalization, what globalization is and ethical issues in relation with international marketing. Globalization is the process of greater interdependence among countries and their citizens; it. The point of the article from the history of globalization dimensions of globalization and the emergence of global institutions to talk about what globalization. And talk about ethical universals and national cultures from history of ethics, ethical universals and national cultures, ethical approaches in international marketing, ethical problems in international marketing. From this article we have two keywords are globalization and international marketing ethics.

From the history globalization has been going on for the past 5000 years. It has been integrated into the lives of everyone. Developed communications and networks around the world and connect everything and everyone together. And economic globalization means that world trade and financial markets are becoming more integrated. The dimensions of globalization, we can look from these sides: economics, political, sociology, psychology, anthropology, communications and geography. What we study? From our chapter, the manager should know the technology developed and the culture to manage the increase or decrease economics. The emergence of global institutions increase the develop speed of globalization. Like WTO, European Union they are the famous and most succeed global economics institutions The drivers of globalization, because of the decline in barriers to flow of goods, services and capital that has occurred, it stimulate the technology develop very fast.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies morals and values. Ethical universals and national cultures, we should know what is culture and ethical perceptions and culture. Culture as” that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and other capabilities acquired by man as a member of society”. And about ethical perceptions and culture, there is a relationship between the cultural environment and the perceived ethical problems. In international business, different cultural environments result in different ethical perceptions in international marketing, The ethical approaches in international marketing, from this article we are talking about two ways: descriptive approach and normative approach. So the international company’s manager should study other country’s culture, religion, other cultural characteristics and respect it, because different Social Values, Cultural, Language, Religion or Education will lead to our trade fail, and that is the different country has different ethical view. And last one is ethical problems in international marketing, at some country the ethical standards are frequently not defined or always clear. So at the international environment is infinitely more complex. Because value judgments differ widely among culturally. That which is commonly accepted as right on one country may be completely unacceptable in another.

If we compare the article with Dafts “The Global Environment”, it said that today’s organization has become more competitive globally by exporting their products, licensing their company, using direct investing strategy and also doing outsourcing. Today organization cannot survive if they does not compete globally. To make an organization a global organization, they must consider a lot of things, including economic, socio culture, legal-political and human resource management. Daft mention about the cultural intelligence means, the ability to use reasoning and observation skills to interpret unfamiliar gestures and situations and devise appropriate behavior response. Daft also mention about managing cross culturally, means managers can prepare for foreign assignments by understanding how the country differs in terms of Globe social values.

So, finally with the above discussion we can conclude the article is fully matched with Daft”The Global Environment”