In Focus:  Globalization 3.0

At lunch, a client recently asked me “Do you believe this is the final stage of globalization? Is it all going to be about China and India taking away more jobs and growing their economies, while Western companies continue to offshore labor to developing countries, from here on forward?”

My answer didn’t require much reflection: “No, I don’t believe we’re close to reaching any kind of final stage. As I see it, most companies haven’t even begun to realize what globalization means for them. For example, many are busy shifting jobs from corporate offices in the United States or in Europe to other corporate offices in India, China, Brazil, or Russia. What most fail to realize is that the majority of future jobs may not even require an office in the first place and that the specific geographical location of their employees may be all but irrelevant.”

Think of all the stories you heard about how job location becomes increasingly irrelevant. For several years now, low-cost airline JetBlue has employed housewives as customer service agents, working from their homes in the state of Utah. Rolls-Royce engineers in the UK can diagnose aircraft engines while working from home, while the planes are actually in the air. Fast food chain Wendy’s is field-testing a concept where people in Sri Lanka remotely take American drive-through orders, enter them into a computer, and send them back to the staff at the service window, who then hand out the orders and take the customers’ money.

Thomas Friedman coined the term ‘Globalization 3.0’ for the convergence of technologies, individuals, and economies around the world that we are only beginning to understand. One of its consequences is that for many future jobs, the physical location of the person doing it is a don’t-care.

Geography and Globalization 3.0

Let’s not get carried away here: in many industries, especially in manufacturing-intensive ones, centralized operations continue to be essential. Some retailers and certain service industries are also tied to specific locations because “the job is where the customer is.” At the same time, more and more businesses realize that a large percentage of jobs and services can now be performed in almost any country and location.

This option, created by technology advancements as well as political, socioeconomic, and cultural trends, presents powerful opportunities to multinational companies embracing it. At the same time, such companies face numerous challenges. Most find that adopting such a global model requires a substantial makeover of corporate policies and practices:

•  Companies must “unlearn” traditional methods of operating from central office locations. This could require numerous transformations in processes and procedures, such as modifying customer interfaces, implementing revised security and IP protection policies, adjusting work hour logging practices, and many others. Without extensive preparation and proper change management, magnitude and complexity of such a makeover can be overwhelming for any corporation.

•  Communicating with employees in meaningful ways and making them feel welcome and included is much harder in a global environment. Companies need to stimulate a sense of belonging and nurture a strong corporate culture across their globally fragmented workforce.

•  With members spread out across many countries and regions, managing virtual teams becomes far more complex than when they are co-located. Different approaches to management and leadership are required. Corporations need to revisit “the way we do things around here”, looking into numerous aspects of managing their people remotely, such as how to conduct effective meetings and make good decisions, or how to prevent and resolve conflicts between people who rarely, if ever, meet in person.

•  National and local cultures continue to play a strong role in spite of the converging factors of globalization. Consequently, managers and employees need to learn effective strategies for working across cultural boundaries. In addition, they must cope with the specific challenges of multi-cultural virtual teaming in an environment where every team member’s cultural background may be different.

The Journey Has Barely Started

Whether we like it or not, globalization takes us on a journey into the unknown that has barely started. Emerging economies in Asia or Latin America now face pressures similar to those developed countries in North America and Europe have come to worry about for many years. Economies find their traditional competitive barriers weakening or disappearing. Some countries fight uphill battles to protect these barriers, while others are trying to adjust by expanding their strengths in areas of competitive advantage, such as technology infrastructure and quality of education. All of them are facing global competition. If anything seems clear at this point, it is that globalization creates opportunities and threats for all countries, including traditional economic powerhouses, up-and-comers such as China and India, and emerging players who are just beginning to reach the threshold of competitiveness on a global scale.

Success in the age of Globalization 3.0 is a matter of individual adjustment as much as it depends on large-scale corporate and macroeconomic decisions. Is your company ready for it? As an individual contributor, manager, and/or leader, are you?

The above is an excerpt from an in-depth article available on our web page.
  Read the full article  (requires Adobe Reader ).
 



Book Of The Month
Essentials of
International Management

 

A comprehensive overview of challenges and success stra- tegies for leaders and indi- vidual contributors working in a global environment.

(click title for full book review)

 


Web Site Of The Month
NigeriaDotCom

 

Useful Nigerian website with business news and links, government information, maps, blogs, and much more.

(click title to visit this web site)

 


Quote Of The Month
 

Internationalizing
your education
is not an indulgence;
it is a necessity for many careers in the 21st century

William Long

 


New!  All of the 50 individual Country Sections from Nego- tiating International Business are now also available online.

Click here to download Country Section PDF files

 

Leadership Crossroads
is a global resource for

  • Global Business Coaching & Training
  • Cross-Cultural Project Management
  • Outsourcing Preparation
  • International Negotiation Training and Assistance
  • Organizational Learning and Development
  • Executive Coaching
Would you like to know
    more about us?

 


 
Managing
Projects
Across
Borders

 
 
 


 
Upcoming Workshops in Richardson, TX:
May 16-18 Negotiating and Working with International Customers, Suppliers, and Partners
June 20-22 Managing International Projects

These three-day project management workshops are facilitated by
Dr. Sue Freedman and Lothar Katz.

Lothar Katz is the founder of Leadership Crossroads.  He has a wealth of experience in achieving productive coopera- tion across cultures and driving business success on a global scale.
A seasoned former executive of a For­tune 500 company, he regularly interacted with employees, cus­tomers, out- sourcing partners, and third parties in more than 25 countries around the world.



Contact : info@leadershipcrossroads.com
 
Leadership CrossroadsTM, 2007

Global Business Practices:
Ten Tips For Doing Business in Nigeria

  • The country’s very pluralistic population includes more than 250 ethnic groups, most of which have their own language.
  • Beware of fraud. It is strongly advisable to check people’s background carefully and verify all information your received.
  • Nevertheless, building strong relationships can be crucial for your success when doing business here.
  • Nigerians tend to distrust people who appear rushed or whose intentions are unclear.
  • It may jeopardize relationships if you openly criticize someone, even in a one-on-one setting.
  • Polite and cheerful greetings are highly valued and can be extensive.
  • If a person has a professional or academic title, make sure to use it.
  • Exaggerations are frequent, so take everything you hear with a grain of salt.
  • People in the country generally converse in close proximity, standing only two feet or less apart. Never back away, even if this makes you uncomfortable.
  • Don’t misread people who speak in a loud voice and look serious. This may not mean that they are angry.


Our newsletter is a bimonthly publication about all aspects of International and Cross-Cultural Business Management.  Past issues can be found in our  newsletter archive.

If this issue has been forwarded to you, would you like to subscribe to it now?

If you are a current subscriber but you do not wish to receive this newsletter in future, simply send a blank e-mail to unsubscribe@leadershipcrossroads.com.