Competing in World Markets - Essay Example

COMPETING IN WORLD MARKETS The contemporary society is undergoing globalization due to immense technological advancements. This phenomenon has caused increased free and easy exchange of goods and services across the globe due to high connectivity. However, there are myriad of barriers to this international trade that can be categorized as social, cultural, political and economic problems. Social barriers are centered on welfare of a particular community and it varies from one place to the other, for instance some regions witness high rates of poverty, hence low purchasing power and this undermines international trade.

There are also economic barriers to international trade for example the famous global financial crisis which has led to high inflation and bailouts (Shah, 2011). Finally political barriers for example formation of trade bodies like world trade organization, (WTO). It is mandated to promote free and fair global trade but it has been criticized for serving the interests of rich countries therefore exploiting the poor ones (Shah, 2011). Political barriers are the most significant since politics involves power and allocation of resources and it dominates social, economic and cultural issues of trade.

To curb the barriers, many businesses employ earned value technique to measure their progress. Earn value is a monitoring tool used to find out whether the budget and the planned time frame tallies with the actual work done to establish if the project is on track. There are barriers to smart earned value like cost, performance and quality. Opponents of the technique say that its implementation cost and efforts are enormous yet the derived benefits of implementation are limited (Tammo, 1999).

This means that a business may spend a great deal to implement this project management tool but there may be low quality output. Cost barrier is the most difficult one to overcome since a business always need money to expand and operate. If more money is used to implement earned value technique then the business may run at squeezed profits or even at a loss due to high cost of operation.ReferencesShah Anup. (2011). Trade, Economy and related Issues. Retrieved from www.globalissues .org/issue/1/trade-economy-related issues. Tammo, T. Wilkens. (1999). Earned Value, Clear and Simple.

Retrieved From http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/docs/earned-value.pdf