The Management of Contemporary Society - Essay Example

GLOBALISATION Introduction In the burgeoning field of globalisation studies, globalisation is generally portrayed as a multifaceted phenomenon involving cultural, social, personal, and political, as well as economic dimensions. There has been substantial discussion within the field about how best to understand globalisation and its dynamics - for example, as a continuation of longstanding trends towards global interchange, as an intensification of modern capitalism, or as a new postmodern phase of disorganised capitalism - with many representations generated and lively debate about which one(s) best capture its essence(s). Yet there tends to be recognition that globalisation, as a multifaceted phenomenon, can and should be seen through multiple perspectives, including those of groups without power who are affected by globalisation and also affect its course. Among the biggest economic issues being discussed and debated in the world today are globalisation and inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. Only on the first issue can one reasonably argue that the purported center of economic representations - mainstream academic economics - plays a leading role in the debate. And, even then, the free trade, pro-globalisation orthodoxy that, with few exceptions, has predominated within mainstream economics for generations has been contested in all three areas: within the discipline of economics, in other academic disciplines, and outside the academy. Another important question is how abrupt the future changes will be. Abrupt climate change generally refers to a large shift of climate that takes place so rapidly and unexpectedly that human and/or natural ecosystems have difficulty to adapt. Globalisation Global Warming Globalisation has increased migration, which resulted in deforestation and global warming. Since 1850 A.D. the climate is dominated by a clear steady warming trend, which has become known as global warming. This warming is particularly noteworthy because the rate of temperature increase is enormously high. In addition, the recent 50-100 years have been the time of unprecedented growth of human activities, accompanied by industrialisation, massive deforestation, and other human interferences with the nature with a thoughtful (harmful) effect on the environment. The natural agents, exerting their influence upon climate has been thus recruiting with a new powerful mean to produce sizeable changes in the climate. One of the essential problems of the present days is to answer the question to what degree the mankind may be responsible for the present-day climate warming. Is the observed global warming just of natural origin, or does it have certain anthropogenic component Is the fact that the climate is getting warmer the result of human insensitive approach to its habitat Is this warming to continue in the future and how serious are the potential environmental consequences If so, the problem of the worldwide increasing air temperature comes to an end as the strictly scientific discipline, but became the uneasy task for everybody on this planet. For about the last decade, there has been an ongoing debate on the contribution of human activities to the global warming of the past century and especially on how anthropogenic activity will contribute to further warming that may occur during the twenty-first century. What is the physical basis for the fear of human-induced changes Similarly to other living organisms in all epochs, the mankind has influenced surrounding environment. However, an impact of human activities has drastically increased after the Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-eighteenth century in the UK and at the present time embraces the continental and/or global scales. The industrial revolution began with the invention of the steam engine. The most important human activities at present that may have an impact on both regional and global climate are connected with: 1. the combustion of fossil fuels and the biomass burning that produce GHG, 2. the emission of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) and other halogen compounds that not only are strong GHG, but also play an important role in the depletion of the stratospheric Ozone layer, 3. the emission of aerosols (propellants used in aerosol sprays) that affect the composition of the atmosphere, and 4. the change due to urbanization, agricultural practices, and forestry that influence the physical properties of the Earth's surface. The energy reaching the Earth's surface from the Sun had been measured precisely enough to confirm the conclusion that the reported recent warming has not been occurring just due to solar radiation changes. Although the reason for detected warming is not completely understood, the most of the climatologists interpret it as the result of the increasing concentrations of CO2, CH4, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere caused by anthropogenic activity. Greenhouse gases have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution, mostly from burning fossil fuels for energy, industrial activities, and also by transportation. Now the greenhouse gases are at their highest concentration levels in the last 400 000 years and continue to rise. Even when the global warming is expedient in some parts of world bringing, e.g. milder winters and longer growing seasons, it may have fatal consequences in others, and globally the expected losses are to outweigh the potential benefits. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; www.ipcc.ch/index.htm) that involves hundreds of scientists and was established to assess scientific, technical, and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, predicted that by year 2100 the average global temperature will rise by 1.4 to 5.8K above 1990 level. The uncertain broad range of possible temperature increase is due to different assumptions considered in the variety of model simulations. Lower boundary indicates that even low climate sensitivity and low economic growth will lead (if no measures are undertaken) to a mean global warming of above 1K, thus surmounting the warmest phase of the Holocene. The IPCC predicted that combined effects of melting ice and seawater expansion from ocean warming might cause the global average sea level rise of approximately 0.1 to 0.9 m between 1990 and 2100. Such rise may bring devastating consequences to coastal communities who will likely experience the loss of their land, increasing flooding due to sea level rise, and more severe storms and surges. Uncertainties remain only about the exact magnitude, rate, and impact of future changes as well as how climate change will afflict different regions. They are stipulated mainly by the lack of sufficient knowledge of how climate could be affected by so-called climate feedbacks and by the difficulty to predict future actions of the society, particularly in the countries of future economic growth and high-energy demands. Gender The goal of bringing globalisation insight into economic life is not without its challenges. While economists and economic sociologists seek understanding of the economic activity of markets and firms, of small groups (such as households) and of individuals, they differ in their explanations. Consider, for example, the association between gender and career outcomes. It is well documented that men are more likely than women to participate in the labor force, and men average more hours of paid labor per week and more weeks of employment per year. Women and men tend to hold different occupations and to work in different industries, firms and jobs. Furthermore, men outearn women, hold more complex jobs, and are more likely to supervise workers of the other sex and to dominate the top positions in their organisation. Economists and sociologists agree that gender is linked to employment outcomes, but they differ in explaining the associations. In globalisation, Sociologists view sex segregation of men's and women's careers as a causal mechanism that gives rise to other career outcomes, notably the earnings gap. Central to sociologists' explanations of the sex difference in career outcomes are the concepts of social differentiation and social stratification, that is, the social location of individuals within social structure, which is consequential to life outcomes. In terms of differences in career outcomes, the occupational segregation of women and men exposes them to different employment practices and reward systems that can amplify or diminish sex differences in other work outcomes. Three social institutions of importance to sociology in which the representation of economic phenomena makes a central contribution: the family, the workplace, and the media. The family comprises the economic activity of households; it is also where the feeding and caring of individuals traditionally takes place. Household labor and marital decision-making are fundamentally organised by gender, and explanations for it are analysed and understood differently by economists and sociologists. The workplace is the location for the productivity of the firm, but the labor force attachment of employees entails work effort and job commitment. Neoclassical economists attribute the earnings gap between men and women to gender differences in the allocation of effort and of commitment to work and family roles, but to what extent do those differences actually exist, and under what circumstances on the job and in the family The media include the mass culture industries of television and film, and as businesses they seek production efficiency and profit-maximisation. However, production takes place under short-term contracting in a context of considerable ambiguity, risk, and uncertainty, and its products, each unique, are made up of artistic and other creative elements. How does culture per se affect the organisation of production in this industry and the trade of its products, especially, in the increasingly important global marketplace Global Markets The international equity markets have become more unified in the past ten years. Owing to the globalisation of business trade, especially in the Asia Pacific region, business and economic cycles of different countries have gradually been moving together in harmony. Such an increasing synchronisation of international economic cycles is affecting the equity markets as well. Institutional investors and fund managers have realised that, due to the more rapid price adjustment of international markets to local and overseas information recently, conducting profitable arbitrage activities among international equity markets are getting more and more difficult. The traditional static asset allocation strategy used to achieve international diversification may not be effective anymore as the correlations among different equity markets are getting stronger. This also explains the recent development and popularity of Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA), which adopts a more dynamic approach in asset allocation than the Strategic Asset Allocation (SAA). Of course, there are many ways to conduct TAA, from a pure quantitative approach to subjective market timing strategy. Adding the dimension of foreign exchange fluctuation, international diversification using some sort of TAA has become a critical and yet challenging ingredient for institutional investors and portfolio managers in managing a global investment portfolio. Empirical evidence from portfolio diversification indicates that a small dosage of international equity can bring substantial risk diversification benefit to a domestic portfolio. However, the underlying principle of international risk diversification rests on the level of correlation between the international securities (equity in most cases) and the domestic assets. Through the recent years, due to globalisation of businesses and consequently equity markets, the correlation between international and domestic assets has been strengthened positively. This increased correlation weakened the diversification benefit for international investments. The increasing momentum of alternative investments in mainstream portfolios held by traditional investors such as pension funds, foundations, and family offices of ultra-high net worth individuals is definitely affecting the role of international equity investments. Recent evidence has shown that even alternative investment indices are getting more correlated with the major US market indices. Conclusion Globalisation covered a lot of ground - from the household to international markets - in order to demonstrate just how central economic representations are to enduring lines of inquiry in sociology, including inequality and stratification, among other fundamental social processes and conditions. It was not to draw lines in the sand between the disciplines, but rather to demonstrate the deep interconnections among them. Sociological analysis of global systems at all levels of complexity presumes they are highly dynamic, and the economy of the household and of the international marketplace are determinative and consequential to the social institutions and social processes. As a unit of production and consumption the family is also a site of gender production, and the symbols and enactments that entails. In the workplace, analysis of women's greater allocation of effort on the job indicates that the wage gap between men and women is not consistent with economic arguments that women's productivity is lower than men's due to family demands. Gender stratification of the labor force is not solely due to sex differences in labor market experience and different kinds of human capital, but also to consequential attributions made about women's investments in household responsibilities. Of equal relevance are the ways in which the organisation of production within and across firms fundamentally shapes the labor market outcomes and career trajectories of individuals. References Amin, S. (1997) Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society. London: Zed. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Calvo, G. A. (2005) Crisis in emerging market economies: A global perspective, Frank D. 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