Globalisation

August 5, 2012 Editor 0

FEW words invoke such contrasting feelings as “globalisation”. For some it is pejorative: Wall Street protestors use it is as shorthand for the evils of global capitalism, sweat shops and malignant power. Others fret about homogeny and the loss of cultural identity. For business it is opportunity. There is no such thing as a local firm, we are told; even the smallest shop in the remotest backwater is now part of the global supply chain. But, above all, it is inevitable. As Clare Short (pictured), a leftwing British politician, quipped: “People have accused me of being in favour of globalisation. This is equivalent to accusing me of being in favour of the sun rising in the morning.”

 

“Internationalisation is like creating a round-toed shoe that fits people with all types of feet. It is not as comfortable as a perfectly fitted shoe and doesn’t fit snugly, but can be worn by many people.”
David DeBry, “Globalizing Instructional Materials: Guidelines for Higher Education”, TechTrends, December 2007

“Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi’s and Nikes, grab their caps and backpacks, and Sony personal CD players and head for school.”
Naomi Klein, author (1970–), No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999)

“The Earth is round but, for most purposes, it’s sensible to treat it as flat.”
Theodore Levitt, academic (1925–2006), “The Globalisation of Markets”, Harvard Business Review, May 1983

“The extension and use of railroads, steamships, telegraphs, break down nationalities and bring peoples geographically remote into close connection commercially and politically. They make the world one, and capital, like water, tends to a common level.”
David Livingstone, missionary (1813–73), The Last Journals of David Livingstone

“Think globally, act locally.”
Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony (1921–99)

“The word ‘overseas’ has no place in Honda’s vocabulary, because it sees itself as equidistant from all its key customers.”
Kenichi Ohmae, management thinker (1943–), The Borderless World (1990)

“In a country like India, the ‘structural adjustment’ end of the corporate globalisation project is ripping through people’s lives. ‘Development’ projects, massive privatisation, and labour ‘reforms’ are pushing people off their lands and out of their jobs, resulting in a kind of barbaric dispossession that has few parallels in history. Across the world as the ‘free market’ brazenly protects Western markets and forces developing countries to lift their trade barriers, the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.”
Arundhati Roy, author (1961–), Not Again

“People have accused me of being in favour of globalisation. This is equivalent to accusing me of being in favour of the sun rising in the morning.”
Clare Short, politician (1946–)

Taken from The Economist‘s “Book of Business Quotations”

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Categories: The Economist

Tags: equivalent to accusing, favour of globalisation, favour of the sun rising in the morning, people