Globalisation Is Just Americanisation By Any Other Name - Essay Example

 Introduction to globalisation: According to US commentators, Globalisation is strategically a successful manoeuvre for redemption of existing system. They emphasise a new era of unique opportunity which is opening up before the world US and his mates. The whole world is moving to the global capitalism. The capital flows will accelerate transfer of technology to the poor countries. The researcher suggests that all national cultural delineation will remove in a homogenised world of global brands. The domination of international capital is the hegemony of the strong nations over the weak. The exponent of Marxists understand that world trade is the strategy of world division of labour is established under capitalism. From the point of potentially that division of labour can make easier every country to grow faster. We have to take advantage of that world division of labour to help the world's poor. Unfortunately, the division of labour imposed upon the less developed countries by the imperialist powers with a view to perpetuates them in the position of yoke of slavery. It's true that capitalism is a global dispensation. The globalisation expedites its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. According to the economic statistician Angus Madison, from 1820 to 1997 National Income per head (the best indicator of the standard of living) rose nineteen times over in the advanced countries. In the less developed countries the increase was just 5.4 times over. With the introduction of globalisation, the gap between rich and poor nations grew ever wider. It's getting worse. According to the World Bank's 'World Development Report' average income in the richest twenty counties is 37 times as high as in the poorest and the gap has doubled in the past twenty years. At present 1.3 billion humans subsist on $1 per day or less. These people are in absolute poverty, and there are nearly 100 million more of them than ten years ago. The capitalism has developed the productive forces, at the same time has failed to eliminate poverty. The Globalisation is an undeniably US process. It has taken off as a concept in the wake of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and of socialism as a viable alternate form of economic organisation. The globalisation is the rapid increase in cross-border economic, social, technological exchange under conditions of capitalist. Country of Origin Effects on IHRM: The capital globalisation means two things. First there is the globalisation of accumulated $25 trillion of 'derivatives' swilling around in the global economy. The movement of capital is to be analyzed in terms of trade. The movements of foreign exchange are now no longer the handmaiden of trade. Every dollar that crosses the exchanges for trade, sixty go for pure speculation. The speculative capital movements now overwhelm trade in their importance for the balance of payments. The financial globalisation has simply become isolated from the global surplus value production. Since 1980, multinationals company’s investment in foreign countries has been far more striking than the growth of trade, and might be the authentic engine of growth. The Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) grew by 30% a year while trade grew by less than 10%. With in 1990, the world's total stock of DFI was counted to be $1.7 trillion. The multinationals now control 80% of world trade. The extensive acceleration of DFI for the past decade has only been made possible by the technological revolutions in communications (IT) and transport (containerization). The globalisation is a threat to the working class struggle for better living standards in every country. The multinational corporations (MNCs) would have assets, sales, ownership of workforces and control concentrated in home countries or regions. Rugman and Verbeke (2004a, b) found in the research of the 500 leading MNCs that the vast majority of MNCs sales concentrated in one of three regional trade blocks (EU, Asia or North America). Leading firms have developed an effective potentiality to locate, source and manage human resources anywhere in the world (Lewin and Volberda, 2003). There are leading US-global firms, European-global firms and Japanese-global firms. Every one is administering in distinctive national business systems with their own patterns of corporate governance and human resource management. There are 63,000 trans-national corporations launched trade patterns account for about two-thirds of all world trade. The leading 100 of these corporations (just 0.2% of the total number of such corporations) account for 14 per cent of worldwide sales, 12 per cent of assets and 13 per cent of employment. There is a tendency towards globalisation and as a process. There is a evident trend towards increasing globalisation (as measured by the average of the ratios of foreign to total assets, sales and employment) launched primarily by an expansion of foreign direct investment (FDI) and an enlargement of international production in the world economy (UNCTAD, 2004). We should understand better how this process operates in relation to the human resource management inside organisations. The theory of organisational potentiality highlight on the ability of a firm’s internal processes, systems and management practices to meet customer needs and to direct both the skills and efforts of employees towards achieving the (in this context global) goals of the organisation . The international expansion is only possible when firms can transfer their distinctive knowledge-assets abroad into new international markets (Dunning, 1993; Caves, 1996). . The organisation structures have to respond to a series of strains faced by the process of globalisation (e.g. growth, increased geographical spread, and the need for improved control and co-ordination across business units) and organisations have to build capability in each stage sequentially in order to maintain integrated standards for some business lines but remain locally responsive in others (Hamel and Prahalad, 1985; Yip, 1992; Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick and Kerr, 1995). The international HRM safeguarded of those professionals who dealt with managers who had to work on overseas postings. It has been emphasised on identifying the particular skills and competencies that were important to be an effective manager in this context. The HR for a dedicated group of managers, but to internationalize all of the fundamental HR processes of an organisation. The HR is being introduced to an ever more diverse and global workforce and the key challenge is to be able to ensure that HR professionals, who might work in a specific domestic setting. The HR processes is robust enough to operate across cultures and diverse labour markets. HR professionals need to have a much broader international education. HR Affordability The important force behind the global HR functions’ recent restructuring efforts has been the made to launch global business strategies in the most cost efficient manner. The organisations are devoting much attention to ensuring that people are operating where they can be most cost-effective and the central overheads are as low as possible. The increased interest will be able to deliver proven cost reductions and ensure HR affordability. There were high pressures on HR affordability for 53% of organisations. It is only 15% seemed to be immune to these pressures. The factor of HR affordability consisted of two elements one is maximizing shareholder value and another is rationalization of costs. It is reflecting the need to be able to deliver and prove cost reductions to ensure HR affordability. Globalisation as ideology: The Chinese were ‘happy’ to work a 14 hour day for 50p. There are four billion new suckers out there to exploit. US capitalists for instance pay $25 per hour for a worker. German workers are worth $25 per hour of any capitalist's money because they're so productive. Investment always beats cheap labour. The logic of the globalisation thesis is that the nation state is becoming powerless and irrelevant in relation to global capital flows. The small nations are only powerless because they are in the yoke of big nation states in the interests of big business. This shows how the concept of globalisation is really an ideological weapon against the aspirations of working people for a better world. The multinational companies always go for cheap wage locations. The multinationals need a technological infrastructure and an educated workforce. Division of the world between associations of US firms Amidst the stranglehold of the world trade mechanism itself, the poor countries are subordinated to the rich. The polite term for what is really humiliating colonial dependence, economic imperialism for developing countries. It is now the case that 75% of trade and 80% of production is located within three great regional trade blocs. Japan has taken the other East Asian economies under its wing. The USA has always regarded Latin America as its backyard. Nobody much wants Africa south of the Sahara. There's no money to be made there. The people are becoming poorer for the past twenty years. The regional blocs are responsible for 80% of world trade. Trade alliances are consolidating the relationships. The EU we now have NAFTA. These regional trading blocs clustered around a regional hegemonic power but the division of the world pointed to by Lenin as a central feature of his theory of imperialism Abundant capital flows are between the advanced US countries. The poor nations don't really get an inhale. What capital does flow to less developed countries heads for client states within these regions? Is it an ideological weapon in the locker of the ruling class? The concept of globalisation is an attempt to understand reality. It is the language of a ruling class assault on working class living standards worldwide. Globalisation: its effects on the national citizenship The national citizenship is generally regarded as the original form of citizenship. . The national citizenship was connected with the protection of the state and the citizen as the warrior-citizen. To this end, those who were not citizens were essentially foreigners or the enemy. The national citizenship involve with these two elements. The rights are given to citizens by the state in return for their loyalty and preparedness to lay down their life for their country but also the exclusion of non-citizens. These factors are very vital in the upcoming discussion as the forces of globalisation. This leads on to what Castles sees as the second challenge to the idea of national citizenship: the idea of global forces undermining the cultural homogeneity of the nation-state. The idea is above of a nation-state with dwindling ability to protect its citizens economically. The Castles goes onto to argue that supra-national norms and ideals have now taken over political and social provision of rights. The classical formal order of the nation-state and its membership is not in place. . Instead, we have a system of constitutionally interconnected states with a multiplicity of membership. The European Union is the example of this with the commitment to freedom of labour and movement for EU citizens within the Union and also the recent signing, except for Britain. Cultural homogeneity is also being eroded due to increased technological advances in the field of information and communication flows. The castles’ third manifestation of globalisation undermining national citizenship is the increased mobility of people around the world and an increased volume of tran-snational migration and immigration. This undermines cultural unity as societies become even more ethnically, socially and culturally diverse on the ground. . New communities form within communities and citizenship becomes unbounded and transferable. The increase in dual nationality is an example of this in practice. Thus, without a free flow labour force, globalisation is just Americanisation by any other name. Bibliography: Bamber, G. J., Lansbury, R. D. and Wailes, N. (2004) International and Comparative Employment Relations, London: Sage Publications. Bartlett, C. A. and Ghoshal, S. (1989) Managing across Borders. The Transnational Solution, London: Random House Brewster, C. Sparrow, P. and Vernon, G. (2007) International Human Resource Management, CIPD. Briscoe, D. R. and Schuler, R. S. (2004) International Human Resource Management: Policy and Practice for the Global Enterprise, London and New York: Routledge Brooks, M. (2001), What is globalisation, London, UK, available at: < http://www.marxist.com/Economy/what_is_globalisation_mb.html > Dowling, P.J. and Welch, D.E. (2004) International Human Resource Management, London: Thomson Learning. Edwards, T., and Rees, C., (2005), International Human Resource Management: Globalisation, National Systems and Multinational Corporations, London: Prentice Hall. Harzing, A. W. and Van R. J., (2004) International Human Resource Management, London: Sage Publications. Held, D., et al. (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press Hofstede, G., (1994), Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, London: Harper Collins. Jackson, T. (2002), International HRM, A Cross-cultural Approach, London: Sage. Katz, H. C. and Darbishire, O. (2000) Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Morley, M. & Scullion, H. (2007), International Human Resource Management in Retrospect and Prospect, Emerald Group Publishing, available at: < http://www.ebooks.com/ebooks/book_display.asp?IID=231840 > Perkins, S. J. and Shortland, S. (2006), Strategic International Human Resource Management, London: Kogan Page. Scullion, H. & Linehan, M. (2005), International Human Resource Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Tayeb, M. H. (2005), International Human Resource Management: a Multinational Company, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Womack, J. P. et al (1990), The Machine that Changed the World. Oxford: Maxwell MacMillan International. Whitley, R. (2000), Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems, Oxford University Press. Whittall, M., et al (2007), Towards a European labours Identity, The Case of the European Works Council, London: Routledge. Read More