case study of globalization

Skip to content
Skip to main navigation
Skip to 1st column
Skip to 2nd column

Global Policy Forum

Board Members
Support GPF
GPF Partners
Annual Reports and Statutes (GPF Europe)
Contact and Disclaimer
Publications
Publications in German
Upcoming Events
Past Events
Events in Germany
General Information on Internships
Internship Application

A Closer Look: Cases of Globalization

Source: wikipedia.org/Ken Banks

Globalization expands and accelerates the movement and exchange of ideas and commodities over vast distances. It is common to discuss the phenomenon from an abstract, global perspective, but in fact globalization's most important impacts are often highly localized. This page explores the various manifestations of interconnectedness in the world, noting how globalization affects real people and places.

Articles and Documents

Chinese imports and contraband make bolivia's textile trade a casualty of globalization (july 6, 2012).

Domestic manufacturing in Bolivia has been crushed by the influx of cheap foreign goods, mainly from China. Bolivian products cannot compete in the global market because of the small scale production, the strict labor law which keeps labor cost high, and the frequent political unrest which hurt competitiveness by raising costs. The Bolivian economy is reliant on raw material extraction, and its trade deficit keeps widening. Although the government is making an effort to raise tariffs and create state-owned companies to save jobs, globalization seems to have caused more bad than good in Bolivia. (Associated Press)

Is France on Course to Bid Adieu to Globalization? (July 21, 2011)

Many in France are blaming globalization for causing high youth unemployment and a stagnated, post recessionary economy. With the 2012 presidential election approaching, the theme of “deglobalization” appears to be growing in popularity due to its nationalistic appeal. Left-wing candidates, including member of Parliament Arnaud Montebourg, are advocating European-based protectionism, and saying that “globalization” has caused France’s high rates of youth unemployment, destroyed natural resources, and made France vulnerable to the fluctuations of interconnected financial markets. While Montebourg is not a likely front-runner for the presidency, his surprising popularity has highlighted the French peoples’ disillusionment and has prompted a discussion of globalization. Ideally, this will “force politicians to work harder on their answers”, and they will work to improve France’s economic recovery plans and their role in a globalized system. (YaleGlobal Online)

350 Movement Video from Bolivia's Climate Summit (April 22, 2010)

Immigrants now see better prospects back home (december 8, 2009), the human effect of globalization (august 30, 2009), following the trail of toxic trash (august 17, 2009), will the crisis reverse global migration (july 17, 2009), in many business schools, the bottom line is in english (april 10, 2007), globalization and child labor: the cause can also be a cure (march 13, 2007), landless workers movement: the difficult construction of a new world (september 29, 2006), for african cotton farmers, more crops equal less pay (august 15, 2006), meet the losers of globalization (march 8, 2006), thanks to corporations instead of democracy we get baywatch (september 13, 2005), global health priorities – priorities of the wealthy (april 22, 2005), guatemala: supermarket giants crush farmers (december 28, 2004).

This article looks at the effects of economic liberalization in Latin America's food retailing system and identifies small scale farmers as the "losers of globalization." Corporate transformations of the regional food sector and its failed trickle-down economics have not generated wealth but rather increased the social inequalities in the region, forcing smaller growers to migrate. ( New York Times )

Campesinos vs Oil Industry: Bolivia Takes On Goliath of Globalization (December 5, 2004)

Privatizations: the end of a cycle of plundering (november 1, 2004), globalization: europe's wary embrace (november 1, 2004), latin american indigenous movements in the context of globalization (october 11, 2004), mixed blessings of the megacities (september 24, 2004), dominican republic: us trade pact fails pregnant women - cafta fails to protect against rampant job discrimination (april 22, 2004), workers face uphill battle on road to globalization (january 27, 2004), money for nothing and calls for free (february 17, 2004), the next great wall (january 19, 2004).

This article examines the growth of geographical, physical and, increasingly, digital immigration barriers to the free movement of people between rich and poor countries. ( TomDispatch.com )

Areas of Work

Special Topics

Archived Sections

Find your institution

Examples: State University, [email protected]

Other access options

More options

Select language

Bahasa Indonesia
Português (Brasil)
Português (Portugal)

Welcome to My Research!

You may have access to the free features available through My Research. You can save searches, save documents, create alerts and more. Please log in through your library or institution to check if you have access.

Translate this article into 20 different languages!

If you log in through your library or institution you might have access to this article in multiple languages.

Get access to 20+ different citations styles

Styles include MLA, APA, Chicago and many more. This feature may be available for free if you log in through your library or institution.

Looking for a PDF of this document?

You may have access to it for free by logging in through your library or institution.

Want to save this document?

You may have access to different export options including Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive and citation management tools like RefWorks and EasyBib. Try logging in through your library or institution to get access to these tools.

More like this
Preview Available
Scholarly Journal

McDonald's: A Case Study in Glocalization

No items selected.

Please select one or more items.

Select results items first to use the cite, email, save, and export options

You might have access to the full article...

Try and log in through your institution to see if they have access to the full text.

Content area

The purpose of this research report was to assess McDonald's globalization strategy. We examined McDonald's strategy across six dimensions: menu, promotion, trademarks, restaurants, employees, and service. We also compared the company's performance across these six dimensions in 10 different countries: Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Greece, Brazil, Indonesia, India, China, Japan, and New Zealand to measure McDonald's success in capitalizing on globalization and localization. As discussed in this report, McDonald's is a global brand through its worldwide standards and training operations, but the company is also local, with its franchising to local entrepreneurs, locally sourcing food, and targeting specific local consumer market demands. McDonald's is an excellent example of blending global with local - an organization that has glocalized very successfully.

Introduction and Purpose

McDonald's has been serving fast food to America since 1955 and has grown into one of the world's leading fast food giants. Today, McDonald's is the leading global foodservice retailer with 1.7 million employees and more than 34,000 restaurants in 119 countries serving nearly 69 million people each day (McDonald's, Annual Report, 2012).

Not too long ago people believed McDonald's would become "a lumbering cash cow in a mature market" (Serwer & Wyatt, 1994). However, its success abroad has offset the maturing market in America. In fact, 65% of McDonald's sales came from international revenues (McDonald's, Annual Report, 2012.) Its worldwide operation concentrates its global strategy, "Plan to Win," and on customer experience, which includes people, products, place, price, and promotion.

This paper will compare McDonald's marketing strategy to determine how well it capitalizes on both globalization and localization. It will look at this strategy by examining ten different countries: Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom, Greece, Brazil, Indonesia, India, China, Japan, and New Zealand, across six different dimensions: menu, promotion, trademarks, restaurants, employees, and service.

McDonald's: The American Standard

The McDonald's American model focuses on fast and convenient service with high purchasing turnover. Its recognizable bright red and yellow colors with the iconic golden arches reaching into the sky offer Americans a piece of the familiar in a foreign country. "Our goal is to become customers' favorite place and way to eat and drink by serving core favorites such as our World Famous Fries, Big Mac,...

You have requested "on-the-fly" machine translation of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace human translation. Show full disclaimer

Neither ProQuest nor its licensors make any representations or warranties with respect to the translations. The translations are automatically generated "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and are not retained in our systems. PROQUEST AND ITS LICENSORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES FOR AVAILABILITY, ACCURACY, TIMELINESS, COMPLETENESS, NON-INFRINGMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Your use of the translations is subject to all use restrictions contained in your Electronic Products License Agreement and by using the translation functionality you agree to forgo any and all claims against ProQuest or its licensors for your use of the translation functionality and any output derived there from. Hide full disclaimer

Suggested sources

About ProQuest
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy

Register or Log In
0) { document.location='/search/'+document.getElementById('quicksearch').value.trim().toLowerCase(); }">

Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology

Anthropology

Burning at Europe's Borders

Alexander-Nathani

Burning at Europe’s Borders invites readers inside the lives of the world’s largest population of migrants and refugees — the hundreds of thousands who are trapped in hidden forest camps and forgotten detention centers at Europe’s southernmost borders in North Africa. “ Hrig ,” the Arabic term for “illegal immigration,” translates to “burning.” It signifies a migrant’s decision to bu...

Burning at Europe’s Borders invites readers inside the lives of the world’s largest population of migrants and refugees — the hundre...

Care for Sale

Gutiérrez Garza

In homes and brothels around the world, migrant women are selling a unique commodity: care. Care for Sale is an in-depth ethnography of a group middle-class women from Latin America who exchange care and intimacy for money while working as domestic and sex workers in London. Illuminating the complexities of care work, the proposed book is a detailed study of women’s lives and working conditions. It considers how their experience of migratio...

In homes and brothels around the world, migrant women are selling a unique commodity: care. Care for Sale is an in-depth ethnography of a group middle...

Indebted examines the economic and political factors that led to the Greek debt crisis, investigating the effects of financial pressures from international lenders, unregulated spending by the Greek government, predatory bank loans, and rising unemployment. The book looks closely at the cultural dimensions of the crisis—how middle class urbanites experienced the shock of a global collapse, managed societal instability, and worked to sustain their...

Indebted examines the economic and political factors that led to the Greek debt crisis, investigating the effects of financial pressures from internat...

Labor and Legality Tenth Anniversary Edition

Gomberg-Muñoz

Labor and Legality is an ethnographic account of the lives of ten undocumented workers in Chicago, originally published in 2010. The book seeks to push past one-dimensional rhetoric and show that undocumented workers are neither mere victims nor criminals, but complicated people engaged in workaday struggles to make their lives better. The book follows these men through their daily routines and records their efforts to improve their fortunes and ...

Labor and Legality is an ethnographic account of the lives of ten undocumented workers in Chicago, originally published in 2010. The book seeks to pus...

Low Wage in High Tech

Mirchandani, Mukherjee, Tambe

Low Wage in High Tech focuses on the lives and livelihoods of housekeepers, drivers, and security guards who work in India's multinational technology firms. These call centers and software firms are housed in gleaming corporate towers within lavish special economic zones; spaces which have become symbolic of new, sanitized, technology-driven development regimes. However little is known about the workers who are responsible for the daily maintenan...

Low Wage in High Tech focuses on the lives and livelihoods of housekeepers, drivers, and security guards who work in India's multinational technology ...

Marriage After Migration

Marriage After Migration is a compelling ethnography centered around the stories of five women in rural Mexico as they work to keep their communities and families together when their spouses migrate abroad. Through rich and highly readable narratives about the lives of these women, author Nora Haenn explores how international migration affects kinship ties and rewrites gender roles. Haenn's research illuminates aspects of migration and globalizat...

Marriage After Migration is a compelling ethnography centered around the stories of five women in rural Mexico as they work to keep their communities ...

Serious Youth in Sierra Leone: An Ethnography of Performance and Global Connection

Generational anxieties over what will happen to the young are unfolding starkly in Sierra Leone, where the civil war that raged between 1991 and 2002-characterized by the extreme youthfulness of the rebel movement-triggered mass fear of that generation being "lost." Even now, fifteen years later with these children grown into young adults, "children of the war" are regarded with suspicion. These fears stem largely from young people's easy embrace...

Generational anxieties over what will happen to the young are unfolding starkly in Sierra Leone, where the civil war that raged between 1991 and 2002-...

Waste and Wealth

Waste and Wealth examines questions of value, labor, and morality underlining the translocal waste networks in Spring District, Vietnam. Engaging with waste as an economic category of global significance, this book provides an account of migrant laborers' complex negotiations with political economic forces to build their economic, social, and moral life from their marginalized position. It thereby makes visible how women and men seek to construct...

Waste and Wealth examines questions of value, labor, and morality underlining the translocal waste networks in Spring District, Vietnam. Engaging with...

Select your Country

Globalization: Case Studies

Learning objectives.

Students will analyze how technological advancements have led to increased globalization.
Students will create presentations that inform about ways in which globalization impacts daily life.
Students will complete Parts 1 and 2 of the guided reading handout.
(5 Minutes) Debrief Homework: Ask students to share key takeaways from homework. Highlight that 1) technological advances have increased globalization and 2) globalization has a direct impact on their daily lives in the food they eat. This sets the stage for a deeper look at the impact of globalization through case studies.
Group 1: A Global Semiconductor Shortage
Group 2: Big in China: The Global Market for Hollywood Movies
Group 3: Human Trafficking in the Global Era
A Global Semiconductor Shortage = data related to backorders, map of supply chain, chips used in a car visual, bullet points of what CHIPS Act does
Big in China = data on box office sales, images related to censored movies, etc.
Human Trafficking = data about numbers of people affected, visuals of common industries where trafficking is common, visuals about products tied to human trafficking.

Students should complete the Impact of Globalization Infographic/ Presentation. They will share at the beginning of the next class meeting. If possible, their infographics should be displayed or shared with the larger school audience (i.e: submitted to the school newspaper).

withholding of information, typically by a government or an authoritative body.

cable, made out of strands of glass as thin as hair, used to quickly transmit large volumes of internet traffic between locations all over the globe.

disease outbreak that has reached at least several countries, affecting a large group of people.

supreme or absolute authority over a territory.

a network—consisting of individual producers, companies, transportation, information, and more—that extracts a raw material, transforms it into a finished product, and delivers it to a consumer.

an international institution created in 1995 that regulates trade between nations. A replacement for the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO manages the rules of international trade and attempts to ensure fair and equitable treatment for its 164 members. It does this by conducting negotiations, lowering trade barriers, and settling disputes. As of 2018, the WTO had 164 members.

Harvard Business School →
Faculty & Research →
Featured Topics
Business & Environment
Business History
Entrepreneurship

Globalization

Health Care
Human Behavior & Decision-Making
Social Enterprise
Technology & Innovation
Globalization →
December 2014

Market Competition, Earnings Management, and Persistence in Accounting Profitability Around the World

We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean revert faster in countries where there is more product and capital market competition, as predicted by economic theory. Country differences in labor market competition and earnings management are also related to mean reversion in accounting returns—but the relation varies with firm performance. Country labor competition increases mean reversion when unexpected returns are positive, but dampens it when unexpected returns are negative. Accounting returns in countries with higher earnings management mean revert more slowly for profitable firms and more rapidly for loss firms. Thus, earnings management incentives to slow or speed up mean reversion in accounting returns are accentuated in countries where there is a high propensity for earnings management. Overall, these findings suggest that country factors explain mean reversion in accounting returns and are therefore relevant for firm valuation.

Spanning the Institutional Abyss: The Intergovernmental Network and the Governance of Foreign Direct Investment

Global economic transactions such as foreign direct investment must extend over an institutional abyss between the jurisdiction, and therefore protection, of the states involved. Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), whose members are states, represent an important attempt to span this abyss. IGOs are mandated variously to smooth economic transactions, facilitate global cooperation, and promote cultural contact and awareness. We use a network approach to demonstrate that the connections between two countries through joint-membership in the same IGOs are associated with a large positive influence on the foreign direct investment that flows between them. Moreover, we show that this effect occurs not only in the case of IGOs that focus on economic issues, but also on those with social and cultural mandates. This demonstrates that relational governance is important and feasible in the global context and for the most risky transactions. Finally we examine the interdependence between the IGO network and the domestic institutions of states. The interdependence between these global and domestic institutional forms is complex, with target-country democracy being a substitute for economic IGOs, but a complement for social and cultural IGOs.

Ethnic Innovation and U.S. Multinational Firm Activity

This paper studies the impact that immigrant innovators have on the global activities of U.S. firms by analyzing detailed data on patent applications and on the operations of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational firms. The results indicate that increases in the share of a firm's innovation performed by inventors of a particular ethnicity are associated with increases in the share of that firm's affiliate activity in their native countries. Ethnic innovators also appear to facilitate the disintegration of innovative activity across borders and to allow U.S. multinationals to form new affiliates abroad without the support of local joint venture partners. Thus, this paper points out that immigration can enhance the competitiveness of multinational firms.

Multinational Enterprises and Incomplete Institutions: The Demandingness of Minimum Moral Standards

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate across countries that vary widely in their legal, political, and regulatory institutions. One question that arises is whether there are certain minimum standards that ought to guide managers in their decision making independently of local institutional requirements, especially when institutional arrangements are incomplete. This chapter examines what follows if managers recognize two kinds of duties of forbearance in their decision making that are commonly held to be among the most minimal of moral duties: the duty not to harm and the duty not to violate the liberty of others. The chapter concludes that the standards for MNEs may be more demanding than what the minimalist nature of duties of forbearance initially would suggest.

Working Paper

Finance and Social Responsibility in the Informal Economy: Institutional Voids, Globalization and Microfinance Institutions

We examine the heterogeneous effects of globalization on the interest rate setting by microfinance institutions (MFIs) around the world. We consider MFIs as a mechanism to overcome the institutional void of credit for small entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies. Using a large global panel of MFIs from 119 countries, we find that social globalization that embraces egalitarian institutions on average reduces MFIs' interest rates. In contrast, economic globalization that embraces neoliberal institutions on average increases MFIs' interest rates. Moreover, the proportions of female borrowers and of poorer borrowers negatively moderate the relationship between social globalization and MFI interest rate, and positively moderate the relationship between economic globalization and MFI interest rate. This paper contributes to understanding how globalization processes can both ameliorate and exacerbate challenges of institutional voids in emerging and developing economies.

Global Initiative

The globalization of business has long encouraged Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty to research international business practices and the effects of globalization. Seminal contributions - Christopher Bartlett on managing across borders , Michael Porter on competition in global industries , and Louis Wells on foreign investment in emerging markets - helped pave today’s global research path. Supported by eight Global Research Centers that facilitate our contact with global companies and the collection of international data, key investigations concentrate on the effectiveness of management practices in global organizations; cross-cultural learning and adaptation processes; the challenges of taking companies global; emerging-market companies with global potential; and international political economy and its impact on economic development.

The Global Initiative builds on a legacy of global engagement by supporting faculty, students, and alumni in their work, and encouraging a global outlook in research, study, and practice.

Recent Publications

Freelancer, ltd..

July 2024 |
Faculty Research

Wizards of the Coast and Magic: The Rebounding

Cementos argos in the u.s.: go big or go home.

June 2024 |

Aidoc: Building a Hospital-Centric AI Platform

Snaptravel: betting on 'super.com', climate governance at linde plc (a).

June 2024 (Revised June 2024) |

Building Innovation at VINCI

Pernod ricard: uncorking digital transformation, market dynamics and moral dilemmas: novo nordisk’s weight-loss drugs.

April 2024 (Revised May 2024) |

From 'BIG' Ideas to Sustainable Impact at ICL Group (A)

March 2024 |

HBS Working Knowlege

23 Jul 2024

The New Rules of Trade with China: Navigating Tariffs, Turmoil, and Opportunities

21 May 2024

What the Rise of Far-Right Politics Says About the Economy in an Election Year

12 Dec 2023

COVID Tested Global Supply Chains. Here’s How They’ve Adapted

Harvard business publishing.

August 29, 2017

How to Successfully Work Across Countries, Languages, and Cultures

How our interconnected world is changing

Globalization isn’t going away, but it is changing, according to recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast , MGI director Olivia White speaks with global editorial director Lucia Rahilly about the flows of goods, knowledge, and labor that drive global integration—and about what reshaping these flows might mean for our interconnected future.

After, global brewer AB InBev has flourished in the throes of what its CFO Fernando Tennenbaum describes as the recent “twists and turns.” Find out how in this excerpt from “ How to thrive in a downturn: A CFO perspective ,” recorded in December 2022 as part of our McKinsey Live series. 1 Please note that market conditions may have changed since this interview was conducted in December 2022.

The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Roberta Fusaro and Lucia Rahilly.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Globalization is here to stay

Lucia Rahilly: Pundits and other public figures have wrongly predicted the demise of globalization for what seems like years. Now, given the war in Ukraine and other disruptions, many are once again sounding its death knell. What does this new MGI research tell us about the fate of globalization? Is it really in retreat?

Olivia White: The flows of goods, the real tangible stuff, have leveled off after nearly 20-plus years of growing at twice the rate of GDP. But the flows of goods kept pace with GDP and even rose a little bit, surprisingly, in the past couple of years. Since GDP has been growing, that means actual ties have gotten stronger.

One of the most striking findings from this research was that flows representing knowledge and know-how, such as IP and data, and flows of services and international students have accelerated and are now growing faster than the flow of goods. Flows of data grew by more than 40 percent per annum over the past ten years.

Lucia Rahilly: Goods are a smaller share of total flows, a smaller share of economic output, than in the past. That doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing. Could it be a sign of progress?

Olivia White: The fact that certain goods are growing less quickly than other types of flows shows this shift in our economy and what’s most important to the way the economy functions. It comes on the back of a long history of different factors that influence growth and shifts in the way patterns work. What’s happening, in part, is that a variety of countries are producing more domestically—first and foremost China. That has been driving a lot of the flow down, if you take the longitudinal view, over the past ten years versus before.

The world remains interdependent

Lucia Rahilly: How interdependent would you say we are at this stage? Could you give us some examples of the ways we’re interconnected?

Olivia White: The top line is, every region in the world depends on another significant region for at least 25 percent of a flow it values most.

In general, regions that are manufacturing regions—Europe, Asia–Pacific, and China, if we look at it on its own because it’s such a large economy—depend very strongly on the rest of the world for resources: food to some degree, but really energy and minerals of different sorts. I’ll give you a few examples.

In general, regions that are manufacturing regions depend very strongly on the rest of the world for resources: food to some degree, but really energy and minerals. Olivia White

China imports over 25 percent of its minerals, from places as far-flung as Brazil, Chile, and South Africa. China imports energy, particularly in the form of oil from the Middle East and Russia. Europe is emblematic of these forms of dependency on energy. It was dependent on Russia for over 50 percent of its energy, but now that has drastically changed.

In some other regions in the world—places that are resource rich, like the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America—those places are highly dependent on the rest of the world for their manufactured goods. Well over half the world’s population lives in those places. They import well over 50 percent of their electronics and similar amounts of their pharmaceuticals. They are highly dependent on other parts of the world for things that are really quite critical to development and for modern life.

North America is somewhat of a different story. We don’t have any single spot of quite as great a dependency, at least at the broad category level. We import close to 25 percent of what we use in net value terms across the spectrum, both of resources and of manufactured goods.

This doesn’t yet speak of data and IP, where, for example, the US and Europe are fairly significant producers/exporters. A country like China is a very large consumer of IP.

Lucia Rahilly: How interdependent are we in terms of the global workforce?

Olivia White: This is quite striking. We asked how many workers in regions outside North America serve North American demand. And we asked the same question for Europe. It turns out that 60 million people in regions outside North America serve North American demand, and in Europe the corresponding number is 50 million.

These numbers are very substantial versus the working populations in those countries. So when you consider how much of what North Americans or Europeans are consuming could be produced onshore, by onshore labor, the answer is not even remotely close to those sorts of numbers—at least given the means of production or the way services are delivered today and the role people play in that.

Lucia Rahilly: Let’s turn to some of the categories of flows that have increased in recent years. What’s driving growth in global flows now that the trade in goods has stabilized?

Olivia White: Flows linked to knowledge and know-how. Knowledge services that have historically grown more slowly than manufactured goods and resources, with increased global connection over time, have flipped over the past ten years.

Professional services, such as engineering services, are among those more traditional trade flows that have been growing fastest, at about 6 percent a year, versus resources, which have slowed to just around two percent. Anything that involves real know-how—engineering, but also providing, say, call center support—is in that category.

The flows of IP are growing even faster. Now, IP is tricky because accounting for it is a very tricky thing to do. But it roughly looks at flows of the fun stuff. In the report we talk about Squid Game , but IP also includes movies, streaming platforms, music, and any sort of cultural elements that we consume.

It’s also important to consider flows of patents and ideas and the way countries or companies will use ideas or know-how developed in one country to help what they do broadly across the world. Those flows have been growing at roughly 6 percent per year as well.

There are data flows—the flows of packets of data. For example, if we were in different countries while conducting this interview there would be the flows between us. There are also flows linked to our ever-expanding use of cloud and data localization. Data transfer is happening more and more quickly.

The flows of international students have also been rising. That was mightily interrupted by the pandemic, for reasons I don’t need to belabor, but these flows seem to be rebounding. It’s important to consider the degree to which those will jump back on their accelerated growth trajectory.

Want to subscribe to The McKinsey Podcast ?

How covid-19 has affected global flows.

Lucia Rahilly: You mentioned flows of international students dropping off during COVID, for the obvious reasons. Did other flows generally drop off during the pandemic? Or were there examples of flows that were particularly resilient throughout that period?

Olivia White: There’s some variation, but many flows were remarkably resilient—resilient in a way that’s a bit counter to the general narrative about what happened during the pandemic.

The flows of resources and manufactured goods jumped reasonably significantly in 2020 and 2021, both to levels of about 6 percent per year on an annualized basis. To some degree, what was happening is that cross-border flows stepped in to replace interrupted domestic production. Flows from Asia came in, for example, to the US or to Europe. We’ve seen some flows go in reverse directions. There was a bunch of interruption in domestic production, which was quite surprising.

Flows of capital also jumped quite a lot as people needed to shift the way they were financing themselves. Multinationals needed to shift the way they were financing themselves. Some were moving liquidity to different parts of the world under times of financial stress. But those jumped to levels of growth in the tens of digits from what had actually been reversed growth for the past ten years. All those things jumped. IP jumped a little bit; data remained high. So these flows have been remarkably resilient.

The good and bad news about resource concentration

Lucia Rahilly: You invoked concentration a bit when you talked about Europe being dependent on Russia for 50 percent of its energy. Can you say a bit more about what concentration means in this context and how it affects the dynamics of the way we’re connected globally?

Olivia White: From the global perspective, there are some products that truly originate in only a few places in the world, and all of us across the globe are dependent on those few places for our supply. Iron ore is quite concentrated, and cobalt is concentrated in the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo].

The second type of concentration is viewed from the standpoint of an individual country. Lucia, you talked about Europe and gas dependency.

For example, Germany was getting gas from only a very concentrated set of sources. These are places where, for a variety of reasons, countries have built up dependencies on just a small number of other countries.

Why has this happened? Why are we in this position? Cost is one reason. People have made decisions based on economic factors. Another reason is regional preference. Not all goods are created equal, even if they fall in the same category.

The third reason is preferential trade agreements between different countries or other forms of tariffs or taxes that shape the way flows occur. We’re in a world in which suddenly people are realizing they have to contemplate the consequences associated with concentration—not of suppliers, but of the country of origin from which they’re buying things.

Lucia Rahilly: It sounds like concentration also increases efficiency in some cases where those disruptions don’t occur. Is concentration always a bad thing? If we rethink concentration, can we expect to see some loss of efficiency in the interim?

Olivia White: No, it’s not always a bad thing. But there are a lot of considerations to make that involve costs, involve geopolitical relationships, involve the role that various countries want to play themselves, how they’re thinking about development, how they’re thinking about their workforces. All those things have to be part of the mix.

Imagine three or four different countries, each with three trading partners, and they’re largely different trading partners. Swapping off who’s supplied by whom is a huge problem of coordination.

How global chains will evolve

Lucia Rahilly: Geopolitical risks have obviously trained a policy spotlight on reimagining these global value chains, whether for security reasons or to strengthen resilience more generally. Accepting that the world remains interdependent, how do we see trade flows continuing to evolve in coming years?

Olivia White: Broadly speaking, there are four categories of potential evolution. Semiconductors are most prominent in public discussion. Electronics, more broadly, is one of the fastest-moving value chains since 1995, with 21 percentage points of share movement per decade. Pharmaceuticals and the mining of critical minerals are other examples. And they will be part of what shifts the way that flows crisscross the globe.

Second category: textiles and apparel. This category is not as sensitive in a geopolitical sense as some of the things I was talking about before. This category is one where you actually do have new hub creation right now. Consumer electronics, other forms of electric equipment that aren’t particularly sensitive, possibly fall in that category too.

Third category: IT services and financial intermediation or professional services. That will reconfigure the ways in which services flow.

Fourth and finally, there’s the stuff that’s just going to be steady—food and beverages, paper and printing. There’s no particular reason to expect that there are strong forcing mechanisms that will change the way those things are flowing across the world right now. They’re things that have remained relatively steady for the past ten or more years.

Global flows are necessary for a net-zero transition

Lucia Rahilly: Do we have a view on whether the evolving state of global flows is helping or hindering the net-zero transition ?

Olivia White: The way I’d put it is, there is no way we move quickly toward a net-zero transition without global flows. There are certainly things about global flows that are tricky from a net-zero perspective. It costs carbon to ship things and move things a long way. But in order for net zero to be attainable, we need to make sure that energy-generating technologies and fuels are able to flow across the world.

Energy-generating technologies include both the minerals that underpin construction of those technologies and the actual manufacturing. So, in the first category, think nickel and lithium. In the second category, think about the actual manufacturing of solar panels. The minerals themselves are processed in only a few countries around the world. So people are going to have to move them from one place to another. Maybe the world could have broader diversification of such things, but on average, the timeline from discovering a mineral to being able to produce it at scale is well in excess of 16 years. If we want to move fast, we have the luxury to move things across the world. Meeting cost curves for manufacturing at scale and in locations where you have at least some established presence is going to be important.

The final element that’s crucial with respect to net zero is cross-border capital flows. It’s really important that developing countries are able to finance shifts in the way that energy is produced and consumed in their countries, which means they may have to both spend more, at least as a ratio of GDP, and have less ability to spend, given other forms of development imperative.

Multinationals and global resilience

Lucia Rahilly: What’s the role of major multinational companies as we look ahead toward reimagining the future of our global connectedness?

Olivia White: The first thing that needs to be recognized is that major multinational corporations play an outsize role in global flows today. Multinationals are responsible for about 30 percent of trade. They’re responsible for 60 percent of exports and 82 percent of exports of knowledge-intensive goods. So they disproportionately drive flows, especially the ones associated with knowledge. And therefore, they’re going to be the center of managing for their own resilience, but also in a collective sense, for the resilience of the world.

The future of global flows

Lucia Rahilly: The media tends to focus on what some see as globalization’s imminent demise. Accepting that global ties continue to bind and connect us across the world, it’s also natural for folks to have pretty strong reactions to these intense and ongoing global disruptions that we’ve experienced in recent years. How would you sum up the way we think about the future of globalization at a high level?

Olivia White: The world we live in right now is highly dependent on flows. Will those flows reconfigure and shift? Yes, absolutely. They have in the past, and they will in the future.

Lucia Rahilly: Do we see anything in the research to indicate that the world is actually moving toward decoupling, which is also very much part of the media narrative?

Olivia White: If you look along regional lines, individual regions can’t be independent. If you just start to play with what sorts of decoupling of regions would be possible, you see very quickly that it’s not something you can do.

Now, is it possible that you would get groups of countries that become more strongly interconnected among themselves and less strongly connected with others? Absolutely. It’s possible to move in that direction. The question becomes, is there an actual decoupling, or do you just have a shift in degree? As with most things in the world, the answer tends toward the shift in degree rather than an abrupt or sharp true change or decoupling.

Lucia Rahilly: Does greater regionalization improve resilience?

Olivia White: To some degree you can say, “Look, if I’m self-sufficient, I’m more resilient.” On the other hand, all of a sudden you depend on yourself for everything, and that’s a point of vulnerability in the same way that getting it only from one other person would be a problem.

There are a whole host of reasons some degree of regionalization might help. You’ve got things closer to you. But dependency just on a few sets of people, whether or not they’re in your region, means you’ve got dependency on just a few points of potential weaknesses rather than a broad web, which in general is a more resilient and robust structure.

Lucia Rahilly: Thanks so much, Olivia. That was such an interesting discussion.

Olivia White: A real pleasure, Lucia. Thank you.

Roberta Fusaro: One example of resilience is AB InBev. Here to talk about how it’s prospering in the face of worldwide disruption is its CFO, Fernando Tennenbaum. This excerpt, “ How to thrive in a downturn: A CFO perspective ,” from our McKinsey Live series, was recorded in December 2022.

Lucia Rahilly: Fernando, we’re confronting an unusual constellation of disruptions: inflation, high interest rates driving up the cost of capital, geopolitical turbulence unexpectedly upending supply chains and sending energy prices spiking—it’s genuinely a volatile moment. Tell us, how is AB InBev faring in the current context?

Fernando Tennenbaum: We’re fortunate to be in a resilient category. Despite these twists and turns in different parts of the world, beer sales have been quite strong. That said, inflation has turned out to be much higher than expected. 2 Market conditions may have changed since this interview was conducted. We need to ensure our operations are in sync with the market, to meet this unique moment. We need to understand the state of the consumer and adjust our operations accordingly.

In emerging markets like Latin America and Africa, inflation is not new news. There are different levels of inflation, but inflation has been a part of these economies for a very long time. Consumers are more used to it, companies are more used to it—and it’s probably a more straightforward discussion.

Lucia Rahilly: You’ve spent much of your career in Latin America where, as you said, inflation has historically been much higher and more volatile than in the US or in Western Europe. Walk us through some of the lessons that we in the US, for example, could learn from.

Fernando Tennenbaum: Make sure that you’re always looking at your customers, and that you’re always keeping up with inflation. You should avoid lagging too much, and you should avoid overpricing compared with inflation. If you do too little or too much, you start disturbing the health of the consumer. If you get it right, it’s probably a good thing for the business. You have to make sure you navigate the rising cost environment while ensuring that the consumer is in a good place, your product is in a good place, and the category is a healthy one. It’s a balancing act.

You should avoid lagging too much, and you should avoid overpricing compared with inflation. If you do too little or too much, you start disturbing the health of the consumer. Fernando Tennenbaum

Lucia Rahilly: AB InBev has a diverse portfolio of brands. Volumes are good. Are customers trading up or down, during this period, between your premium and mass-market brands?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Premiumization continues to be a trend, and consumers continue to trade up to premium brands. Over the course of this year, people often asked whether consumers were trading down—and we see no evidence of trading down. That is true for the US, that is true for Africa, and that is true for Latin America—which is quite unique.

I don’t know if the future will be different; the world is changing so fast. But if you were to ask me ten years from now, I’d expect premium to be even bigger than it is today.

Lucia Rahilly: Let’s talk about uncertainty. The economy could play out in many different ways. How do you manage for that?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Let’s take our debt portfolio. Now is the moment that interest rates are going up. Inflation and borrowing are going up. Overall, this tends to be bad news—but for us, it’s quite the opposite because we don’t have any debt maturing in the next three years. We prepared for this when we saw the world going to a very different place at the beginning of 2020.

We ended up raising some long-term debt and repaying all our short-term debt. Now we’re left with a debt portfolio that has an average maturity of 16 years and no meaningful amount of debt maturing in the next three years—all at a fixed rate. Since we don’t need to refinance, we’re actually buying back our debt. Rising interest rates can be good when you can buy back debt cheaper than it cost to issue.

Lucia Rahilly: You became CFO at AB InBev in 2020, when pandemic uncertainty was at its peak. Talk to us about how you navigated that period.

Fernando Tennenbaum: The first thing we did in 2020 was pump up our cash position. Not that we needed it, but I felt it would give operations peace of mind. To be prepared, we started borrowing a lot of money. And we started taking care of our people. We needed to make sure our people were safe—that was priority number one.

Once we made sure our employees were safe, our operations were safe, then we looked at opportunities and started to fast-forward. I remember we looked at May, for example, and started to see a lot of markets doing well in terms of volume. We had a lot of cash. We started buying back some debt, especially near-term debt, to create even more optionality for the future.

We also accelerated our digital transformation. The moment was uniquely suited for it. Digital was a much better way to reach customers at a time when everybody was afraid to meet in person. In hindsight, the company ended up in a much better place today than it was three years ago—in terms of our portfolio, our digital transformation, and even financially—because we acted very quickly and created a lot of optionality during the first few months of the pandemic.

Lucia Rahilly: Any mistakes to avoid?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Looking back, I wouldn’t have done anything massively different. If I had known the outcome, I might have done things differently. But without knowing the outcome, I felt that the way we managed and the optionality we created set us up well.

Lucia Rahilly: Brewing is such an agriculturally dependent business, and agriculture has been significantly disrupted, both because of the war in Ukraine and because of climate-related risk. As CFO, how do you think about sustainability in terms of longer-term value creation?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Sustainability cuts across the whole of our business. We have a lot of local suppliers—20,000 local farmers. Our brewing processes are natural. The more efficient we are there, the more sustainable we are and, actually, the more profitable we are. We have local operations, and we sell to the local community. And most of our customers are very small entrepreneurs. The more we help them, the better they can run their business. And we say beer is inclusive because we have two billion consumers.

Lucia Rahilly: Is packaging also part of the sustainability approach?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Definitely. For example, we have returnable glass bottles. That’s very efficient, very sustainable, and from an economic standpoint, that’s probably the most profitable packaging we have. It’s also the most affordable for consumers. So it’s good for us, good for the environment, and good for the consumers.

Lucia Rahilly: You said beer is inclusive in part because so many of us drink it. How else do you approach inclusion at AB InBev?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Our two billion consumers are very different from one another. We need to make sure that, as a company, we reflect our consumers. Whenever we look at our colleagues, we need to make sure they reflect the societies where we operate—and we operate in very different societies.

A diverse and inclusive team is going to be a better team. That also applies to our suppliers. For example, if you think about suppliers in Africa, some are very poor. They manage to get access to technology, which means we can track whether they’re receiving the funds we pay them. We can track where agricultural commodities are being sourced. So how we financially empower them is also a very important part of our sustainability strategy.

Lucia Rahilly: Looking ahead, how are you thinking about innovation and investment in technology, in order to enable growth?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Innovation is a key component of beer, and there are two sides to that. One is innovation in products. The other is packaging. In Mexico, for example, we have different pack sizes for different consumption occasions and consumer needs.

Beyond that, there’s also technological innovation. Take our B2B platform, which we started piloting in 2019. Now, three or four years later, we have around $30 billion of GMV [gross merchandise value] in our e-commerce platform, which is accessible in more than 19 countries. That’s the optimal portfolio to improve customer engagement at their point of sale. Before we launched our B2B platform, we used to spend seven minutes per week interacting with our customers. Today, with our B2B platform, we interact with them 30 minutes per week. We increased the number of points of sales. For example, in Brazil, we used to have 700,000 customers, and now we have more than a million customers. Previously, they were buying our products from a distributor. Now we can reach them directly with the B2B system in place.

This connection with our customers means we can do a lot of other things, like our online marketplace, where third-party products generated an annualized GMV of $850 million, up from zero four years ago. That marketplace now continues to grow and to deliver a lot of value for our customers and for ourselves.

Lucia Rahilly: One more question: If you could give one piece of advice to a brand-new CFO of a large, multinational corporation, what would it be in this market?

Fernando Tennenbaum: Make sure you plan for different scenarios. The world is moving very fast, and you can’t expect it to unfold in a certain way. But if you have options, are agile in making decisions, and have a very engaged team, then regardless of the twists and turns, you are able to meet the moment. And you are definitely able to deliver on your objectives.

Lucia Rahilly: I lied. I’m going to ask you one more. How do you see, for these new CFOs, the relationship between sustainability and inclusivity and growth? Do you see those in tension?

Fernando Tennenbaum: There is this myth that you are either sustainable or profitable. At least at AB InBev, we’re sure they go hand in hand. The more sustainable you are, the more profitable you are, and the more value you create for your different stakeholders.

Fernando Tennenbaum is the CFO of Anheuser-Busch InBev. Olivia White is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute and a senior partner in McKinsey’s Bay Area office. Roberta Fusaro is an editorial director in the Waltham, Massachusetts, office, and Lucia Rahilly is global editorial director and deputy publisher of McKinsey Global Publishing and is based in the New York office.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

Explore a career with us

Global flows: The ties that bind in an interconnected world

On the cusp of a new era?

Globalization’s next chapter

Has Globalization Influenced a Country’s Cultural Values? The Case of Collectivism and Individualism Worldwide

First Online: 09 August 2024

Cite this chapter

Yousif Abdelrahim 8

Part of the book series: Studies in Systems, Decision and Control ((SSDC,volume 540))

The author of this analysis intends to examine how globalization has affected individuality and collectivism among people in various cultural and socioeconomic contexts. In light of this, this study investigation experimentally examines how individualism and collectivism relate to the concept of globalization in fifty-five different nations and regions worldwide. The author used secondary data from Manikov, Hofstede's 2012 study, and the 2022 Globalization Index—to compare the effects of globalization on individualism and collectivism using simple regression analysis. According to the study's findings, collectivism and globalization have a negative and substantial relationship (= − 0.651; P-value = 0.000***; significant at 0.0001). The test results also show a favorable and strong correlation between individuality and globalization among countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Durable hardcover edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Abdelrahim, Y., Alenezi, M.: The influence of globalization on a country’s cultural values: has globalization influenced power distance among countries? Human Interact. Emerg. Technol. (IHIET-AI 2022) Artif. Intell. Future Appl. 23 (23) (2022)

Google Scholar

Yusuf, A.: Impact of Globalization on Culture. Unpublished Text (2008)

Hussin, R.M., Putit, L., Subramaniam, G.: Social media as an open innovation: deciphering its relationship with firm performance, compatibility, and security concern. In: Open Innovation in Small Business: Creating Values for Sustainability, pp. 87–98. Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore (2023)

Duru Ford, L.: The Macdonization of Hongkong Global Policy Forum. Radio Northerland (2002)

Tuhus-Dubrow, R.: World Languages are Fast Disappearing Global Policy Forum, New York Independent, Apr 25 (2002)

De Mooij, M.: Consumer Behavior and Culture: Consequences for Global Marketing and Advertising. Sage Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA (2004)

Wani, H.A.: Impact of globalization on world culture. Res. J. Human. Soc. Sci. 2 (2), 1–4 (2011)

Getahun, Z.: Negative impact of globalization on indigenous cultures: the case of Salale Oromo, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia. J. Cult. Soc. Anthropol. 1 (2), 28–36 (2019)

Article Google Scholar

Kaul, V.: Globalisation and crisis of cultural identity. J. Res. Int. Bus. Manage. 2 (13), 341–349 (2012)

Orunmoluyi, T.P.: Globalization: a Millenium challenge for Nigerian banks. De Economist 4 (1), 31–32 (2000)

Hemelink, C.: The politics of world communication In: Edu/Globalization/Debates. Assessed 25 Nov 2010 (1994)

Otokhine, E.: Internet Strengthens Cultural Imperialism. The Comet. Aug23, pp. 12–21; Nigerian Banks, The Economist, 4, pp. 31–32 (2000)

David, F.: Why National Pride Still Has a Home in the Global Village. Global Policy Forum, New York. The Scotsman, May 18 (2002)

Obiola, A.L.: Feminism, Globalization and Culture After Beijing (2002)

Hofstede, G.: Cultural Dimensions (2003). www.geert-hofstede.com

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J.: Cultures and organizations: Software of the Mind. MacGraw-Hill, Columbus, OH (2004)

Minkov, M., Hofstede, G.: Hofstede’s fifth dimension: new evidence from the world values survey. J. Cross-Cult. Psychol. 43 , 2–14 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022110388567

Scherer, B.N.: Globalization, Culture, and Communication: Proposal for Cultural Studies Integration within Higher Education Graphic Design Curriculum. Iowa State University (2010)

Yang, H.: On Hofstede’s Two Cultural Dimensions: Individualism-Collectivism and Power Distance. In: 2019 9th International Conference on Education and Social Science (ICESS 2019). da sunulan sözlü bildiri

Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G.J., Minkov, M.: Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, vol. 2. Mcgraw-hill, New York (2005)

Singelis, T.M., Triandis, H.C., Bhawuk, D.P., Gelfand, M.J.: Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individualism and collectivism: a theoretical and measurement refinement. Cross-Cult. Res. 29 (3), 240–275 (1995)

Bauman, Z.: Liquid modernity. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica (2006); Bawden, D.: Information and digital literacies: a review of concepts. J. Document. 57 (2), 218–259 (2001). www.um.es/fccd/anales/ad05/ad0521.pdf (0908-2011)

Stiglitz, J.E.: Globalization and Its Discontents. WW Norton & Company, New York, London (2002)

Nafstad, H.E., Blakar, R.M., Carlquist, E., Phelps, J.M., Rand-Hendriksen, K.: Globalization, neo-liberalism and community psychology. Am. J. Community Psychol. 43 , 162–175 (2009)

Gilles, L.: The Era of Emptiness. Essays on Contemporary Individualism. Gallimard, Paris (1983)

Gygli, S., Haelg, F., Potrafke, N., Sturm, J.E.: The KOF globalisation index–revisited. Rev. Int. Organ. 14 , 543–574 (2019)

Shah, G.: The impact of economic globalization on work and family collectivism in India. J. Indian Bus. Res. (2009)

Setiawan, A.B., Karman, N.A.C., Dunan, A., Mudjiyanto, B.: Digital strategies and policy approach for small medium micro business development in Indonesia. In: Open Innovation in Small Business: Creating Values for Sustainability, pp. 71–86. Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore (2023)

Siregar, O.M., Selwendri: Characteristics of Small and Medium-Scale Enterprises: Orientation, Innovation, Performance, and Competitiveness. In: Rafiki, A., Dana (eds.) (2023)

Utterback, J.M.: Innovation in industry and the diffusion of technology. Science 183 (4125), 620–626 (1974)

Burns, R.O.: Innovation: The Management Connection. Lexington Books (1975)

Jolly, V.K., Kayama, H.: Venture management in Japanese companies. J. Bus. Venturing 5 (4), 249–269 (1990)

Maidique, M.A.: Entrepreneurs, champions, and technological innovation. Sloan Manage. Rev. 21 (2), 59 (1980)

Nonaka, I., Yamanouchi, T.: Managing innovation as a self-renewing process. J. Bus. Ventur. 4 (5), 299–315 (1989)

Hofstede, G.: Cultures Consequences, International Differences in Work Related Values. Beverly Hills (1980)

Abdelrahim, Y.: The influence of culture on rates of innovation: re-examining Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Int. J. Manage. 11 (9) (2020)

Almana, A.N., Connerton, T.: Family business and innovation on internationalization process. In: Open Innovation in Small Business: Creating Values for Sustainability. Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore, pp. 269–282 (2023)

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Management, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia

Yousif Abdelrahim

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yousif Abdelrahim .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Adnan Kassar School of Business,, Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon

Rim El Khoury

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Abdelrahim, Y. (2024). Has Globalization Influenced a Country’s Cultural Values? The Case of Collectivism and Individualism Worldwide. In: El Khoury, R. (eds) Technology-Driven Business Innovation: Unleashing the Digital Advantage. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 540. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62656-2_19

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62656-2_19

Published : 09 August 2024

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-62655-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-62656-2

eBook Packages : Intelligent Technologies and Robotics Intelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Reliable knowledge. Facts you can trust. Insights you can use.

The Case for Globalization

May 05, 2022

By Li Wei, Professor of Economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business

The First Wave of Globalization

According to the American economist Frederic Mishkin, the period from 1870 to 1914 was the first wave of globalization. At that time, global trade grew at an average annual rate of 4%, and its share of global GDP increased from 10% in 1870 to 20% in 1914. International capital flows increased at an average annual rate of 4.8%, rising from 7% of global GDP in 1870 to 20% of GDP in 1914. In his famous book published in 1919, The Economic Consequences of Peace, John Maynard Keynes wrote fondly of this era:

“What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914!…An inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend.”

This first wave of globalization was accompanied by unprecedented economy prosperity. From 1870 to 1914, global GDP per capita grew at an annual rate of 1.3%; While from 1820 to 1870, it only grew by 0.53%.

Another benefit of globalization is that it accelerates the development of poorer countries. Japan is a prime example – since the 17 th century, Japan was closed to the outside world, but after the Perry Expedition arrived at the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1853 with their “black ships”, Japan had no choice but to trade with the United States, which led to Japan opening its border. This eventually led to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and Japan’s full integration of the Japanese economy into the global economy. In 1870, Japan’s per capita income was less than 25% of Britain’s. But from 1870 to 1913, the gap between the two countries narrowed – Japan’s per capita income grew by 1.5%, while Britain’s only grew by 1.0%.

The opposite case happened in China. After the Opium War, although China gradually opened its doors, reform was slow. Unlike Japan, China was not fully integrated into the global economy – this caused the gap between China and more advanced countries to widen. In 1870, for example, China’s per capita income was equivalent to 24% of Britain’s, and by 1914, that had fallen to 13%.

The End of the First Wave of Globalization

Along with the economic prosperity brought by the first wave of globalization came the awakening of national consciousness in many countries, which ultimately contributed to the outbreak of World War I. As violence spread across the world, normal trade and investment activities were greatly disrupted, thus ending the first wave of globalization. Unfortunately, the postwar years were also full of turmoil – from 1914 to 1929, the average international trade-to-GDP ratio fell from 22% to 16%, and capital flows fell from 20% to 8%.

The worst was still yet to come. In 1929, the United States fell into an economic crisis, which soon spread to other countries and placed the global economy under enormous pressure. Unemployment in America was at 25%, and per capita income fell 30% by 1933, and was only slightly higher in 1939 than in 1929. To protect themselves, countries adopted beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the United States in 1930, which sharply increased tariffs on imported goods. Britain withdrew from the gold standard in 1931, causing the pound to fall, and thus winning more market share for its products globally. It also raised tariffs on imported goods. As some countries abandoned the gold standard and devalued their currencies, those countries that were still tied to the gold standard felt they were “getting the short end of the stick” and followed suit, devaluing their currencies and imposing import taxes. As a result, no one won in this zero-sum game. There was a period of breakdown in international trade and finance which was later described as a “currency war”. Towering tariffs caused the trade volume to plummet worldwide.

The economic crisis brought years of economic decline in the United States, historically known as the Great Depression. However, the situation was far worse in Germany and Italy. As their economy collapsed and social tensions intensified, democratic governments could not control the situation, which led to fascist governments rising to power. As soon as they came to power, they adopted a “guns before butter” model, vastly expanding military spending and preparing for war. Within a few years, World War II broke out, which was the largest war ever fought by mankind. Losses were also the greatest with at least 50 million people losing their lives from 1939 to 1945, more than half of them civilians.

Mishkin believed that the end of the first wave of globalization and the outbreak of two world wars taught us two lessons: one is that globalization is not an irreversible process; the second is that the consequences of rejecting globalization could be catastrophic.

China in the Globalized World

After World War II, in order to prevent another world war, capitalist countries led by the United States established the Bretton Woods system. The system was characterized by its “dual peg”, whereby the dollar was pegged to the gold (at the time the U.S set the price of gold at USD $35 an ounce), and other currencies were pegged to the dollar. The three institutions – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) – were established at this time. Following this period was the development of a new wave of globalization.

In this new wave, Japan developed first, followed by the Four Asian Tigers (i.e. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong), and finally China. Before 1978, the atmosphere of the Cold War was still very apparent, and China’s top leaders were focused on war and revolution at the cost of economic development. However, after 1978, with Deng Xiaoping at the helm of a new generation of leaders, peace and economic development were brought to the forefront of policy in China. Fortunately, the leaders at that time did not adopt a closed-door policy, but chose to integrate into the global financial system, similar to the way Japan and the Four Asian Tigers had done. Since then, foreign investment flooded into China, bringing not only capital but advanced technology and ideas, which greatly boosted China’s economy. At the same time, China also joined global supply chains through foreign trade, and continually increased its production capabilities and market size.

After reform and opening up in 1978, China was lucky to catch on to a period when globalization was in full swing. Since China’s economy is deeply integrated into the global economy, it could be said that without globalization, China’s economy would not be where it is today.

It is clear from these examples that solitary development cannot exist in a modern economy. The modern economy is interconnected, and only by embracing globalization can a country achieve economic growth. Isolation from the global economic system will only lead to impoverishment and the weakening of an economy. Today, Russia is facing a very difficult situation because not only is it facing economic sanctions from governments in Western countries but is also facing a backlash from Western companies. Western corporations, such as Visa and Mastercard, have announced their withdrawal from the Russian market. Russia’s relations with the western world are now under a high state of uncertainty, and this poses a serious threat to globalization.

Globalization is China’s lifeline. Maintaining it will mean making difficult decisions. What China does next to preserve the global order will have implications that go beyond our lifetime.

Enjoying what you’re reading?

Professor profile.

Professor of Economics, Associate Dean for Asia and Oceania, Director of Case Center and Director of Big Data Economic Research Center, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) PhD, University of Michigan

The chinese economy is due a round of quantitative easing.

DALL·E-2024-01-26-10.03.17-Generate-a-realistic-stock-image-representing-Chinas-economy-and-quantitative-easing.-The-image-should-look-like-a-professional-stock-photo-featurin-3jn4yzng3e76qeajq765fk.png

26 January 2024

Limitless Supply Economics

22 January 2024

Using ‘fusion’ to help generate new growth within an enterprise

16 November 2023

Mixing it up

03 April 2024

Driving change

02 April 2024

Meeting in the middle

Economic Refurbishment

01 April 2024

Our Programs

The Biotech Innovation Program

Global unicorn program series.

This program equips CEOs and founders in the life sciences and biotechnology industry with the essential knowledge and connections needed to thrive in this rapidly evolving sector.

Location University of California, San Diego, USA

Date September 9-13, 2024

Language English

CKGSB-ESCP Global Unicorn Program in Luxury & Tech

Delivered collaboratively by ESCP and CKGSB, this immersive program is tailored for visionary global leaders seeking to navigate the intersection of luxury and technology.

Location ESCP Montparnasse Campus, Paris

Date September 23-26, 2024

CKGSB-ESMT Global Unicorn Program in Deep Tech

The program will provide practical business strategies to grow, scale, globalize, and potentially exit deep tech ventures and will touch upon the latest insights on deep tech advancements, such as AI, cutting-edge computing, and cybersecurity innovation.

Location Berlin

Date October 28-31, 2024

Global Unicorn Program: Scaling for Success in the Age of AI

In collaboration with the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD), this CKGSB program equips entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and key stakeholders with the tools, insights, and skills necessary to lead a new generation of unicorn companies.

Location Stanford University Campus, California, United States

Date Dec 09 - 13, 2024

Emerging Tech Management Week: Silicon Valley

This program offers insights into emerging technology developments and the skills required to innovate, grow, and transform your business strategy.

Location University of California, Berkeley, USA

Date November 3-8, 2024

Frontiers in Digital Innovation: AI, Future of Tech & Data Science

This program offers you the opportunity to master AI algorithms and data analytics, navigate future technology landscapes, and embrace cross-cultural perspectives.

Location New York, USA

Date June 23-27, 2025

Get China insights delivered directly to your inbox!

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services.

Understand China from the inside

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter today!

CKGSB Knowledge Magazine
CKGSB Newsletter

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

How Rakuten’s Shift to English Transformed Its Culture HBR On Strategy

Entrepreneurship

In 2010, Japan’s largest e-commerce platform Rakuten was rapidly expanding into global markets when CEO Hiroshi Mikitani made a surprising announcement: Rakuten’s internal language would be changing to English. That meant that all meetings, emails, and other communications would have to be conducted in English. The company’s employees had two years to become proficient in the language or be demoted. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case, “Language and Globalization: ‘Englishnization’ at Rakuten,” and explains why Mikitani introduced this new mandate and what results it achieved. You’ll also learn about the early challenges that accompanied this enormous change, including loss of productivity and employee skepticism, as well as how the shift to English shaped Rakuten’s long-term working culture. Key episode topics include: strategy, global strategy, globalization, cross-cultural management, language, communication, leadership, transformation, organizational culture. HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. · Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten (2017) · Find more episodes of Cold Call · Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org ]]>

More Episodes

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Reading Lists
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Share Podcast

How Rakuten’s Shift to English Transformed Its Culture

A conversation with Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley on the strong connection between language and globalization.

Apple Podcasts

That meant that all meetings, emails, and other communications would have to be conducted in English. The company’s employees had two years to become proficient in the language or be demoted.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case, “ Language and Globalization: ‘Englishnization’ at Rakuten ,” and explains why Mikitani introduced this new mandate and what results it achieved.

You’ll also learn about the early challenges that accompanied this enormous change, including loss of productivity and employee skepticism, as well as how the shift to English shaped Rakuten’s long-term working culture.

Key episode topics include: strategy, global strategy, globalization, cross-cultural management, language, communication, leadership, transformation, organizational culture.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten (2017)
Find more episodes of Cold Call
Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts – hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

In 2010, Japan’s largest E-commerce platform, Rakuten, was rapidly expanding into global markets when CEO Hiroshi Mikitani made a surprising announcement: to ensure the organization’s worldwide success, he changed Rakuten’s internal language to English. That meant that all meetings, emails, and other communications would be conducted in English, and the company’s employees had two years to become proficient in the language or be demoted.

Today we bring you a conversation about the thinking behind Mikitani’s mandate and the results it achieved with Harvard Business School professor, Tsedal Neeley. In this episode, you’ll learn about the early challenges that accompanied such enormous upheaval, including loss of productivity and employees who questioned the relevance of the new mandate. You’ll also learn how the shift to English shaped Rakuten’s long-term working culture and productivity. This episode originally aired on Cold Call in November 2017. Here it is.

BRIAN KENNY: 59 miles southwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River marks the spot of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon. Thought to have been the largest city in the world in the 18th century, it was a center of commerce and culture. As the Bible tells it, the city was founded by Noah’s descendants, who in the years following the great Flood united as one community, even speaking the same language. Together they achieved great things and their ambition knew no bounds. So they decided to build a tower tall enough to reach the heavens as a self-tribute.

But no surprise, God had a different idea, and with one mighty blow, He struck the tower down, scattered the Babylonians to the corners of the earth and caused their tongues to speak different languages. The lessons of the Bible notwithstanding, it’s intriguing to think about how different the world would be if we all spoke the same language. Today we’ll hear from Professor Tsedal Neeley about her case entitled, “ Language and Globalization: Englishnization at Rakuten .” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call .

SPEAKER 3: So, we are all sitting there in the classroom.

SPEAKER 4: Professor walks in and…

SPEAKER 5: And they look up and you know it’s coming.

Speaker 6: Oh, the dreaded cold call.

BRIAN KENNY: Professor Neeley teaches MBA students and executives at Harvard Business School. Her research focuses on the challenges that global collaborators face when attempting to coordinate work across national and linguistic boundaries. She’s also the author of a new book, the Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations. That’s really at the heart of what we’re going to talk about today. Tsedal, thank you for joining me.

TSEDAL NEELEY:

Thank you for having me.

BRIAN KENNY: It’s great to have you back on the podcast. We had you here last year. So we’re here today to talk about a completely different topic, and this is the centerpiece of your book, is the ideas that are coming from this case. So, I want to get into both the ideas that are in the book as well as in the case since they overlap a lot. But I’ll ask you just to begin by doing what I always ask faculty to do, which is tell us who the protagonist is and what’s on their mind.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Fabulous. So, the protagonist in this case is the CEO, celebrity CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani of Japan’s largest online retailer who mandated one single language for his entire organization in order to globalize rapidly and then panics a little bit. Did he do the right thing? He told them that they had two years to clear a language proficiency test or face demotion. Was that the right thing? Is he going to have to demote everyone? This was a huge, huge publicly visible strategy that he enacted. What does he do now?

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. How did you hear about this? How did you learn about what he was up to?

TSEDAL NEELEY: It’s interesting because my work starting from my doctoral training at Stanford 15 years ago was looking at language and globalization. So it wasn’t long before we found each other. He did this, and soon after he wanted to get a little bit of insights from me and I wanted a case. So it was a match made in heaven.

BRIAN KENNY: Now, Englishnization is a hard thing to say. Is that a real word? What’s the story with that?

TSEDAL NEELEY: That is a real word that he coined and has trademarked.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

TSEDAL NEELEY: And in a sense, it’s a tough word, and I hear that all the time, just like you experienced it. But the word in a sense shows that there’s a transition to English and how an organization can go through that transition, and ultimately it’s a global strategy.

BRIAN KENNY: One of the first things I thought of when I saw the case was why English? Why not Chinese? We keep hearing we should all learn to speak Chinese or we should all learn to speak Spanish. But why did he decide that English was the way to go?

TSEDAL NEELEY: He decided that English was the way to go because he is in step with worldwide trends. English is the unequivocal business language of the world. In fact, approximately 60% of global companies have an official common language, which is English. And this has been the case now for some 30-plus years. We’ve had many, many common languages, or as we say lingua francas in Latin, over the centuries, but English is the one today, and it is the fastest spreading language in human history.

BRIAN KENNY: I found that really surprising.

TSEDAL NEELEY: It’s surprising in a way, and if you think about it, not very surprising. You would think that the business languages of the world are dictated by population, size of populations or where the emerging markets are. But the reality is the lingua francas of the world are designated based on the superpower status of the people that language follows, the British, the Americans, for example, and the structure of the language itself.

BRIAN KENNY:Having been in many other countries around the world, I can almost always find somebody who speaks English. I can find somebody to help me out, and that’s been true in Asian countries and European countries. I was struck in Japan. I had trouble finding anybody who spoke much English. So how prevalent is English in Japan?

TSEDAL NEELEY: Actually, your observation is spot on. And interestingly enough, when Mikitani mandates English for his entire organization, he’s also looking to push the boundaries, the national boundaries of the Japanese society around English and globalization. And although English is part of the educational system, so each Japanese student is exposed to English when they’re quite young, but they never use it. It’s not used in business. It’s not used in cross-border work. But that’s changing rapidly. And he’s been one of the trailblazers in this change. So much so that Prime Minister Abe has tapped him to help reform the English language education in Japan, and they’ve been doing a lot there.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow. Tell us a little bit about both Mikitani and Rakuten. What’s the business all about and what’s he like as a business leader?

TSEDAL NEELEY: So, Rakuten, the company itself is comparable to an Amazon, eBay, Expedia, all of those put together. So, Rakuten has an ecosystem of all of these online businesses and services, and people opt into membership into Rakuten. So, you become a Rakuten subscriber. And you make all of your purchases through them. So, you can buy eggs, wine, plane ticket, and some online banking all through this membership. And they actually have close to 90% market dominance in Japan when it comes to online business.

In terms of Mikitani, he’s a fascinating leader, and I really love the privilege that I’ve had in getting to know him. He is dubbed as the Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos of Japan for his prescience into understanding what technology can do for commerce. He is fearless in his decision-making. Sometimes he would be the only person having a particular vision and pursuing it. His co-founders, his executive team looking and turning the other way, and he feels and has this gut instinct about the future.

He’s extremely bright, the capacity to process a ton of information across many domains. He’s the son of a famous economist, and sometimes you can see him and hear him almost like a teacher, professor, leader when he’s thinking and talk is very charismatic too.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. He would have to be, I would think, to lead this kind of an enterprise. The ambition that he has for Rakuten is described in the case. He’s really all about globalization at this point.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes. He really is. And this is something that he’s talked about and thought about. I was able to trace it back to him in his thirties.

TSEDAL NEELEY: So, he’s been thinking about it and talking about it for years and years and years and really went all out. In this case, it’s really about that.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And he may have 90% market share in Japan, but Japan’s a relatively small market compared to China and other places where they want to take this business. So they’re engaging, his employees are engaging daily, both with clients and with partners who are around the globe. Can you talk a little bit about the sort of landscape of Rakuten?

TSEDAL NEELEY: Absolutely. And since this case has been written, they’ve expanded dramatically. So they were in about six, seven countries when the case was written, and now they’re really covering the globe partly through their acquisitions, their partnerships, their joint ventures, and in fact, they today are the key sponsors for FC Barcelona’s soccer team.

TSEDAL NEELEY: So, instead of Qatar Air, you’re going to see Rakuten with Messi running around in the Rakuten jersey. And they just inked the deal that was announced recently with the Golden State Warriors, our NBA championship team, where Rakuten is now etched on their jerseys. This is how global they’ve become.

BRIAN KENNY: And that may be a first, I think, for an American sports franchise to have an international brand on their jersey or represented. So that’s a huge deal. Right?

TSEDAL NEELEY: That’s exactly right. And in fact, they were the ones that the Golden State Warriors selected because precisely the fact that they are a global company and a global brand. They opted away from other possible sponsors because they weren’t global enough. So the NBA has this global vision, so now they’re seeking to partner with a global company like Rakuten in order to actualize that global vision. Rakuten couldn’t have done that five, six years ago.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, that’s an amazing co-branding play there. Both brands benefit from that.

So, if I’m an employee of Rakuten, I might be based in the U.S., my English is good. I speak English. That’s not the case obviously for other employees. So can you talk a little bit about how this was introduced as an idea, not an idea, I guess was a mandate, right?

TSEDAL NEELEY: It was a total mandate. And what happened was in March 1, 2010, Hiroshi Mikitani stepped up on a podium and addressed 7,000 of his Japanese employees with some 3,000 overseas employees listening in and said, “From this day forward, we are going to migrate to the English language from Japanese.” Employees had two years to clear a language proficiency test or face demotion. There was no turning back. They needed to take up one of their key principles, speed, speed, speed. Englishnization started that very day.

Now, the Japanese employees struggled and struggled and struggled. In fact, for a period of two years, they worked harder than they’d ever worked in their lives. They were filled with anxiety and they struggled, but that changed. Within two years, they were speaking with their counterparts in English around the world. They were spreading their Japanese corporate cultural practices easily, and it became actually, English became the conduit by which they expressed and spread their corporate culture, which they believe is one of their competitive advantages.

Now, you the American was very excited in the beginning, very, very excited. Within two years, the Americans suddenly experienced culture shock, culture shock because the Japanese could now impose their corporate cultural practices rooted in their national identity to the Americans in new ways.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. It’s the careful what you wish for after effect of this policy.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Precisely. You might just get it. You might just get it.

BRIAN KENNY: Now, in the case, and also in the book, you describe the different sorts of profiles of people when this kind of mandate is issued. Can you describe that a little bit? You don’t have to go into great detail, but I think…

TSEDAL NEELEY: Oh, sure.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.

TSEDAL NEELEY: So, first you have the Japanese employees who work and lived in Japan, but yet had to take up a new language. So, I call them linguistic expats because they become expats while living in their own countries when it came to language use. The Americans, I call the cultural expats based on what I just described, the fact that they would walk into their offices in New York and in California and be immersed in Japanese culture in new and unexpected ways.

There’s a third group. This group comes from places like France and Brazil and Germany and Taiwan, and they’re neither Japanese nationals or English native speakers. I honestly thought this would be the double jeopardy group when I first learned about this. But it turns out once they climbed the steep English language and Japanese cultural curve, they adapted quickly. I call them the dual expats because they’re neither Japanese or English native speakers, but they have proven to me to be the group that is the most adaptive and has been able to live out the decoupling of language and culture and the mixing and matching of language and culture in very productive ways.

BRIAN KENNY: So, as a manager, if you’re advising a manager on what kind of employees to hire, that sounds like a pretty good criteria, right?

TSEDAL NEELEY: It’s fantastic group that they’re able to detach from their language or their culture and able to operate like true expats in their own countries. That’s what I’ve been talking about since writing this book. This notion of how can we operate like expats in our own countries and have what I call global work orientation in order to better serve our organizations and our customers no matter where they live, no matter what they speak, no matter who they are.

BRIAN KENNY: If we look at the profile of students who come to a place like Harvard Business School, many of them have been able to travel, they’ve been able to experience other cultures, and they’ve become more comfortable in their shoes no matter where they are in the world. So as other businesses are thinking about globalizing, does this indicate that there’s a model here that managers can think about following?

TSEDAL NEELEY: I think there’s an absolute model that managers can follow, and part of it is certainly you don’t have to have been a dual expat in order to gain some of the insights that we saw through the Rakuten case. It’s the attitudes, it’s the behaviors, it’s the norms that they possess that we can package and teach others. And that’s all actually outlined and highlighted in the book.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. So you’ve discussed this case in class.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes.

BRIAN KENNY: I don’t want to ask you to get into and give away what happens in the class.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes, yes. Let’s not do that.

BRIAN KENNY: No, but one question I would have is you teach both an Exec. Ed and an MBA. If you’ve taught it in both, you get a very different reaction from, let’s say, the more senior people who have been in their career for some time versus people who are just beginning their careers?

TSEDAL NEELEY: It’s interesting because the MBAs really look at this case as employees, as the recipients of this language strategy and language mandate. What does it feel like? What could it be like? What does this mean for employees? Executives are blown away from this case because it shows them that you could be bold, that you could be radical, that you need to truly set some clear strategies in order to globalize your organization. And this case ends up being a model for it because we’re able to actually show them a five to seven-year trajectory of the company, what’s happened, how they did this, how they changed, and it becomes a place where people learn. And it’s interesting, oftentimes people are in awe of Hiroshi Mikitani as they learn about the case. He becomes an inspiration to many, many people.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And he may have started a movement that has no end in sight.

TSEDAL NEELEY: I think so. I think so.

BRIAN KENNY: Tsedal, thank you so much for joining us today.

TSEDAL NEELEY: It’s always such a pleasure.

HANNAH BATES: That was Harvard Business School Professor Tsedal Neeley in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Nicole Smith, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next week.

Subscribe On:

Latest in this series

This article is about strategy.

Global strategy
Globalization
Cross-cultural management

Partner Center

IMAGES

Case Study On Globalization and Education
Topic 1 globalization case study pdf
(PDF) Case Study: Impacts of Globalization on Socio-Economic Domain of Employees in the Area of
Globalization Case Study
Globalization case study
Case study on globalization at general electric

COMMENTS

An economist explains the pros and cons of globalization
The advantages of globalization are actually much like the advantages of technological improvement. They have very similar effects: they raise output in countries, raise productivity, create more jobs, raise wages, and lower prices of products in the world economy. What might be the advantages of globalization that someone would feel in their ...
A Closer Look: Cases of Globalization
Globalization expands and accelerates the movement and exchange of ideas and commodities over vast distances. It is common to discuss the phenomenon from an abstract, global perspective, but in fact globalization's most important impacts are often highly localized. ... Migration is a major factor in global society. A recent study shows how the ...
The State of Globalization in 2021
Cross-border flows plummeted in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world, reinforcing doubts about the future of globalization. As we move into 2021, the latest data paint a clearer — and ...
Globalization: A Case Study
strong position to influence national (and international) law has long been The World Bank and Crimes of Globalization. 17. recognized (Passas, 1999: 401). In an increasingly globalized world, we need to adopt conceptions of crime that transcend limitations of traditional state-based law.
McDonald's: A Case Study in Glocalization
The purpose of this research report was to assess McDonald's globalization strategy. We examined McDonald's strategy across six dimensions: menu, promotion, trademarks, restaurants, employees, and service. We also compared the company's performance across these six dimensions in 10 different countries: Saudi Arabia, France, the United Kingdom ...
The State of Globalization in 2023
July 11, 2023. Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images. Summary. Plummeting flows of trade, capital, and people at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted a wave of speculation about the end of ...
Issues of Globalization: Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology
The Issues of Globalization series introduces key analytical concepts and theories of globalization in the contemporary world through rich and compelling ethnography. It offers new research through case studies in a style and format that is appropriate for both students and scholars of Anthropology and related fields.
Globalization: Case Studies
Highlight that 1) technological advances have increased globalization and 2) globalization has a direct impact on their daily lives in the food they eat. This sets the stage for a deeper look at the impact of globalization through case studies. (15 Minutes) Reading - The Impact of Globalization: Divide the class into three groups and assign ...
Case Study: Strategizing at Amazon When Globalization Comes ...
Abstract. Amazon's success depends on the access it enjoys to a single and global market. While this has been true for now, the firm's CEO wonders whether he and others have taken globalization for granted. The case reviews the evidence and discusses the extent to which globalization could go into reverse mode.
The State of Globalization in 2022
The State of Globalization in 2022. Its collapse has been vastly overstated, according to an analysis of international flows of trade, capital, information, and people. by. Steven A. Altman. and ...
Globalization
The globalization of business has long encouraged Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty to research international business practices and the effects of globalization. ... This case study explores how the VINCI Group, a French multinational operating in concessions, energy, and construction, bolstered awareness and adoption rates of new ...
Full article: Innovation and Globalization
Globalization is experiencing challenges and undergoing changes, which the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted. Companies are adapting accordingly. ... Papers and case studies should highlight companies' perspectives about how globalization is changing in light of current pressures—political, pandemic, supply chain, economic, etc. Submissions ...
Globalization, Class, and Immigration: An Intersectional Analysis of
The conception of globalization has been discoursed by applying the cognitive, spatial-temporal, and material aspects of globalization as an overarching tripartite constellation and critical lens to extrapolate and decode some of the enmeshed constructs of globalization embedded in the case study (Held et al., 1999). The fourth part of the ...
PDF Globalization and International Linkages
Although globalization and international linkages have been part of history for centuries (see the International Man-agement in Action box later in the chapter, "Tracing the Roots of Modern Globalization"), the principal focus of this opening chapter is to examine the process of globalization in the con-temporary world.
The future of globalization: What to expect next
Globalization isn't going away, but it is changing, according to recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, MGI director Olivia White speaks with global editorial director Lucia Rahilly about the flows of goods, knowledge, and labor that drive global integration—and about what reshaping these flows might mean for our interconnected ...
A Global version of Locals (a case study on globalization, media & the
Globalization creates opportunities to local communities if it is addressed via an organized process and by well-structured institutions. Economy has played a key role in promoting globalization, thus, other aspects/dimensions of globalization (i.e. Socio-Cultural, Communicative, and Political) might be more essential for globalization in order to influence local communities. The paper ...
Globalization and Sustainable Development: Case Study on International
Globalization and Sustainable Development: Case Study on International Transport and Sustainable Development Jonathan Ko¨hler1 Abstract ... Reardon, Henson, and Berdegue (2007) discuss the case of food and supermar-kets, showing also the development of new trade patterns between NICs or South-South trade. However, these countries stand in ...
Global Strategy: Articles, Research, & Case Studies on Global Strategy
Global Strategy. New research on global strategy from Harvard Business School faculty on issues including strategies for doing business in emerging markets, effective cross-border strategies, and innovation through global collaboration as a new source of competitive advantage. Page 1 of 9 Results. 16 Apr 2020. Research & Ideas.
PDF Economic Consequences of Globalisation: Case Study of Thailand1
Economic Consequences of Globalisation: Case Study of Thailand1. ulty of Economics, Thammasat University, ThailandDecember 2019Abstract: The paper reviews empirical works examining the effect of globalisation in Thailand, eginning with a discussion of its integration into the economy. Three drivers of economic globalisation are emphasised ...
The Benefits and Challenges of Globalisation for the Development of
This paper presents a case study of an emerging university in East Africa and explores the challenges of high ambition while responding to globalisation. ... science education and African indigenous knowledges. In: Kapoor D (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Neoliberal Globalization, Development and Education in Africa and Asia. Rotterdam ...
PDF A Case Study of Mcdonald's: Globalization and Fast-Food Industry Dominance
The case study examines strategies for globalization employed by McDonaldꞌs, the iconic fast-food chain, and its dominance in the global fast-food industry. McDonald's has effectively leveraged its standardized menu, innovative marketing campaigns, and adaptive business model to establish a strong presence in over 100 countries.
Globalization
Bruce R. Scott. A country's competitiveness, like a company's, is not primarily a matter of sales: it is a matter of incomes, and incomes earned, not borrowed. To be competitive means to raise ...
Has Globalization Influenced a Country's Cultural Values? The Case of
This study's SRA outcomes are compatible with results, and that is the reason why globalization displays an adverse and significant connection with COL and a favorable and meaningful association among fifty-five nations. The SRA outcomes of examining fifty-five developed nations and growing and developing countries propose several findings ...
The Case for Globalization
The Case for Globalization. May 05, 2022. By Li Wei, Professor of Economics at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. The First Wave of Globalization . According to the American economist Frederic Mishkin, the period from 1870 to 1914 was the first wave of globalization. At that time, global trade grew at an average annual rate of 4%, and its ...
Exploring Globalization's Impact on Business Management
Executive Summary In an increasingly interconnected world, the influence of globalization on business management practices is profound and multifaceted. This research delves into the dynamic relationship between globalization and various aspects of business management, exploring its implications across industries and geographic regions. The study identifies globalization as a driver of both ...
‎HBR On Strategy: How Rakuten's Shift to English Transformed Its
HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. · Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten (2017)
How Rakuten's Shift to English Transformed Its Culture
In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case, "Language and Globalization: 'Englishnization' at Rakuten," and explains why Mikitani introduced this ...