GLOBALISATION OF BUSINESS

GLOBALISATION OF BUSINESS

i
Globalization theory
Globalization aspects
Worl wide flow of economics
Export and import views
Understanding the transition
of human society in the mellenium
The field of economics
International relations
Management and sociology

ii
Globalisation Business
Environment
Changes in the international economy
Liberalization
Govt role in development and transition
Market economies
Wide spread programme to de-regulate economies to reform Regulations in the area of global business environment

iii.
Forein Direct Investments
Well established international
corporations
Population ,poverty and health

iv.
Globalisation Dimensions
The state of the literature
Trade Dimensions
International Relations
Developing and integrating Approach to globalization

v.
Global Leadership
Necessity of global leadership
The nature of global conflict
The US role


GLOBALISATION OF BUSINESS

During the last decades of the 20th century many barriers to international trade fell and a wave of firms began pursing global strategies to gain competitive advantage.
Rather than thinking in terms of national markets and national economies, leaders of business thought in terms of global markets.

i. Globalization theory

Globalisation is a business philosophy based on the belief that the world is becoming more homogeneous - national distinctions are fading and will eventually disappear.
Globalisation is an increase in interconnectedness and interdependence of economic activity and social relations.
If the world is homogeneous then companies need to think globally and standardise their strategy across national boundaries.
Globalisation concerns:

• Trade in goods and services
• Investment
• Labour force movement
• Products
• Production
• Technology
• Research and development
• Exchange of ideas and knowledge
• Intellectual property

Key features of globalisation
• Rapid expansion of international trade
• Internationalisation of products and services by large firms
• Growing importance of multinational corporations
• Increase in capital transfers across national borders
• Globalisation of technology
• Shifts in production from country to country
• Increased freedom and capacity and firms to undertake economic transactions across national

• boundaries
• Fusing of national markets
• Economic integration
• Global economic interdependence

Growth of multinational enterprise:

There are various forces driving the growth of MNCs:
• The search for growth markets
• Globalisation of markets
• Desire to reduce production costs
• Desire to shift production to countries with lower unit labour costs
• Desire to avoid transportation costs
• Desire to avoid tariff and non tariff barriers
• Forward vertical integration
• Extension of product life cycles
• Deregulation of capital markets


Globalization aspects

Globalisation (or globalization) describes the process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a global network of political ideas through communication, transportation, and trade. The term is most closely associated with the term economic globalization: the integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, the spread of technology, and military presence.[1] However, globalization is usually recognized as being driven by a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural, political, and biological factors. The term can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture through acculturation. An aspect of the world which has gone through the process can be said to be globalised…

World wide flow of economics

The United Nations ESCWA says globalization "is a widely-used term that can be defined in a number of different ways. When used in an economic context, it refers to the reduction and removal of barriers between national borders in order to facilitate the flow of goods, capital, services and labour... although considerable barriers remain to the flow of labor... Globalization is not a new phenomenon. It began towards the end of the nineteenth century, but it slowed down during the period from the start of the First World War until the third quarter of the twentieth century. This slowdown can be attributed to the inward-looking policies pursued by a number of countries in order to protect their respective industries... however, the pace of globalization picked up rapidly during the fourth quarter of the twentieth century..."

Export and import views

Free trade agreements (FTAs) are generally made between two countries. Many governments, throughout the world have either signed FTA, or are negotiating, or contemplating new bilateral free trade and investment agreements.

The agreements are like stepping stones towards international integration into a global free market economy. There are another way to ensure that governments implement the liberalisation, privatization and deregulation measures of the corporate globalisation agenda.

It is assumed that free trade and the removal of regulations on investment will head to economic growth reducing poverty and increasing standards of living and generating employment opportunity.

Past evidences show that these kinds of agreements allow transnational corporations (TNCs) more freedom to exploit workers shaping the national and global economy to suit their interests. In simple terms it removes all restrictions on businesses.

FTAs severely constrain future governments in their policy options and help to lock in existing economic reforms which may have been imposed by the IMF, World Bank or Asean Development Bank, or pursued by national governments of their own volition. It work towards removing all restrictions on businesses as other free trade and investment agreements perform.

FTAs are sometimes of narrow range in their dealing of traded goods. You can note the US-Cambodia bilateral textile trade agreement which was extended in January 2002 for a further 3 years.

India and Sri Lanka signed a free trade agreement in December 1998 with India agreeing to a phase out of tariffs on a wide range of Sri Lankan goods within 3 years, while Sri Lanka agreed to remove tariffs on Indian goods over eight years. One of its objectives which was stated was to contribute, by the removal of barriers to bilateral trade "to the harmonious development and expansion of world trade".

Other FTAs are much more comprehensive and cover other issues including services and investment. These agreements generally take existing WTO agreements as their benchmark. They often strive to even go further than what is set out in the WTO rules.


Understanding the transition of human society in the mellenium

Researchers from NCAER and University of Maryland recently released a report titled Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition. This report is published by the Oxford University Press.
India’s rapid economic expansion has raised global interest in its complex society. This report highlights how poverty and affluence intersect with age-old divisions of regional inequalities, gender, caste, and religion that have long structured human development in India. Together, these economic and social forces shape every facet of Indians’ lives—their children’s education, health and medical care, the creation of new families, the care of older generations, and their entry into, or exclusion from, important social connections. Results from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) of 41,554 households will inform a wide range of contemporary debates and policy challenges.

Results presented in the report highlight three issues:
1. Persistent Social Inequalities: In spite of the rapid transformation of the Indian economy, social inequalities based on caste, ethnicity and religion persist. Dalits and adivasis are at the bottom of most indicators, Muslims and OBCs in the middle and forward caste Hindus and other minority religions at the top. These positions are not immutable, for example, when it comes to education, Muslims are as disadvantaged as dalits and adivasis, although their economic well-being is more on par with that of OBCs. As if inequalities in the parental generation were not enough, future generations seem doomed to replicate these inequalities since dalit, adivasi and
Muslim children seemed to be left of out skill acquisition and are far less likely to be able to read and perform basic arithmetic operations than other children.
The report also indicates sharp gender inequalities with extremely low rates of female labour force participation. Education fails to reduce these differences, with women’s labour force disadvantage growing rather than reducing with primary education. When women are in the labour force, they tend to work mostly on family farms or caring for livestock. Even when women engage in paid work, their daily income is only 53 paisa per rupee earned by men in rural areas and 68 paisa in urban areas. Women’s economic vulnerability is compounded by their social vulnerability
2. Spatial Disparities: This report documents particularly high urban advantage in human development in the six metropolitan areas—Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, and Hyderabad—compared with second- and third-tier cities. Similarly, the rural disadvantage is particularly sharp in the least-developed villages. Indians in metropolitan areas seem to live in a totally different universe from their brothers’ and sisters’ in the least-developed villages: they have higher household incomes; a higher proportion of adults who speak English fluently (16% vs. 2% for males) and have some computing skills (19% vs. 2%); and have a cell phone in the household (24% vs. 1%).
One of the most striking results in this report is the large state difference in almost all indicators of human development. Infant mortality rates in Kerala (estimated at 9 per thousand) rival those of developed countries; in contrast, those in Uttar Pradesh (estimated at 80 per thousand) are substantially higher. Similarly female literacy rates in the Northeast are 81%, about twice the rate in Rajasthan.
3. Lack of Public Services: This report documents the poverty of service delivery in many institutions. Water and electricity remain irregular: 43% of households with electric connections do not have electricity at least 18 hours per day; 63% of households with piped water do not get water at least 3 hours per day. Teacher absenteeism in government schools is rampant, and almost a third of children in these schools report having been beaten or pinched in the preceding month. Barely half of children aged 8–11 can read a simple paragraph, and less than half can do two-digit subtractions. About 1 in 6 of the government heath centres visited for the report had dirty walls and about 1 in 7 had dirty floors. The doctor/director was
absent at the time of the visit in almost one-quarter of the visits. Not surprisingly, government services remain underutilized. The vast majority of sick people, even the poor, rely on private health care. Enrolments in private schools are rapidly rising, even in rural areas.

The Field of Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goodsand services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek οἰκονομία (oikonomia,"management of a household, administration") from οἶκος (oikos, "house") + νόμος (nomos, "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)" Current economic models emerged from the broader field of political economy in the late 19th century. A primary stimulus for the development of modern economics was the desire to use an empirical approach more akin to the physical sciences.[
Economics aims to explain how economies work and how economic agents interact. Economic analysis is applied throughout society, in business, finance and government, but also in crime, education, the family, health, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, and science. The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.
Common distinctions are drawn between various dimensions of economics. The primary textbook distinction is between microeconomics, which examines the behavior of basic elements in the economy, including individual markets and agents (such as consumers and firms, buyers and sellers), and macroeconomics, which addresses issues affecting an entire economy, including unemployment, inflation, economic growth, and monetary and fiscal policy. Other distinctions include: between positive economics (describing "what is") and normative economics (advocating "what ought to be"); between economic theory and applied economics; between mainstream economics (more "orthodox" dealing with the "rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus") and heterodox economics (more "radical" dealing with the "institutions-history-social structure nexus") and between rational and behavioral economics.

International relations
International Relations (IR) (occasionally referred to asInternational Studies (IS)) [1] is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs). It is both an academicand public policy field, and can be either positive or normative as it both seeks to analyze as well as formulate the foreign policy of particular states. It is often considered a branch of political science (especially after 1988 UNESCO nomenclature), but an important sector of academia prefer to treat it as an interdisciplinary field of study.
Apart from political science, IR draws upon such diverse fields aseconomics, history, international law, philosophy, geography,social work, sociology & social sciences, anthropology,psychology, women's studies/gender studies, and cultural studies/ culturology. It involves a diverse range of issues including but not limited to: globalization, state sovereignty, ecologicalsustainability, nuclear proliferation, nationalism, economic development, global finance, terrorism, organized crime, human security, foreign interventionism and human rights.
The history of international relations is often traced back to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, where the modern state system was developed. Prior to this, the European medieval organization of political authority was based on a vaguely hierarchical religious order. Westphalia instituted the legal concept of sovereignty, which essentially meant that rulers, or the legitimate sovereigns, had no internal equals within a defined territory and no external superiors as the ultimate authority within the territory's sovereign borders. A simple way to view this is that sovereignty says, "I'm not allowed to tell you what to do and you are not allowed to tell me what to do." Classical Greek and Roman authority at times resembled the Westphalian system, but both lacked the notion of sovereignty.
Westphalia encouraged the rise of the independent nation-state, the institutionalization of diplomacyand armies. This particular European system was exported to the Americas, Africa, and Asia viacolonialism and the "standards of civilization". The contemporary international system was finally established through decolonization during the Cold War. However, this is somewhat over-simplified. While the nation-state system is considered "modern", many states have not incorporated the system and are termed "pre-modern".
Further, a handful of states have moved beyond the nation-state system and can be considered "post-modern". The ability of contemporary IR discourse to explain the relations of these different types of states is disputed. "Levels of analysis" is a way of looking at the international system, which includes the individual level, the domestic nation-state as a unit, the international level of transnational and intergovernmental affairs, and the global level.
What is explicitly recognized as International Relations theory was not developed until after World War I, and is dealt with in more detail below. IR theory, however, has a long tradition of drawing on the work of other social sciences. The use of capitalizations of the "I" and "R" in International Relations aims to distinguish the academic discipline of International Relations from the phenomena of international relations. Many cite Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War as the inspiration for realist theory, with Hobbes' Leviathan and Machiavelli's The Prince providing further elaboration.
Similarly, liberalism draws upon the work of Kant and Rousseau, with the work of the former often being cited as the first elaboration of democratic peace theory. Though contemporary human rights is considerably different than the type of rights envisioned under natural law, Francisco de Vitoria, Hugo Grotius and John Locke offered the first accounts of universal entitlement to certain rights on the basis of common humanity. In the twentieth century, in addition to contemporary theories of liberal internationalism, Marxism has been a foundation of international relations.

Study of IR
Initially, international relations as a distinct field of study was almost entirely British-centered. IR only emerged as a formal academic ‘discipline’ in 1918 with the founding of the first ‘chair’ (professorship) in IR - the Woodrow Wilson Chair at Aberystwyth, University of Wales, rapidly followed by establishment of IR at US universities and Geneva, Switzerland. from an endowment given by David Davies, became the first academic position dedicated to IR. In the early 1920s, the London School of Economics' department of International Relations was founded at the behest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker.
The first university entirely dedicated to the study of IR was the Graduate Institute of International Studies (now the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies), which was founded in 1927 to form diplomats associated to the League of Nations, established in Geneva some years before. The Graduate Institute of International Studies offered one of the first Ph.D. degrees in international relations. Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service is the oldest international relations faculty in the United States, founded in 1919. The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago was the first to offer a graduate degree, in 1928.

Theory
Main article: International relations theory
IR theories can be roughly divided into one of two epistemologicalcamps: "positivist" and "post-positivist". Positivist theories aim to replicate the methods of the natural sciences by analysing the impact of material forces. They typically focus on features of international relations such as state interactions, size of military forces, balance of powers etc. Post-positivist epistemology rejects the idea that the social world can be studied in an objective and value-free way. It rejects the central ideas of neo-realism/liberalism, such as rational choice theory, on the grounds that the scientific method cannot be applied to the social world and that a 'science' of IR is impossible.
A key difference between the two positions is that while positivist theories, such as neo-realism, offer causal explanations (such as why and how power is exercised), post-positivist theories focus instead on constitutive questions, for instance what is meant by 'power'; what makes it up, how it is experienced and how it is reproduced. Often, post-positivist theories explicitly promote a normative approach to IR, by considering ethics. This is something which has often been ignored under 'traditional' IR as positivist theories make a distinction between 'facts' and normative judgments, or 'values'.
During the late 1980s/1990 debate between positivists and post-positivists became the dominant debate and has been described as constituting the Third "Great Debate" (Lapid 1989).
Positivist Theories
Realism
Realism focuses on state security and power above all else. Early realists such as E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau argued that states are self-interested, power-seeking rational actors, who seek to maximize their security and chances of survival. Cooperation between states is a way to maximize each individual state's security (as opposed to more idealistic reasons). Similarly, any act of war must be based on self-interest, rather than on idealism. Many realists saw World War II as the vindication of their theory.
It should be noted that classical writers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes are often cited as "founding fathers" of realism by contemporary self-described realists.[citation needed] However, while their work may support realist doctrine, it is not likely that they would have classified themselves as realists (in this sense of the term). Realists are often split up into two groups: Classical or Human Nature Realists (as described here) and Structural or Neorealists (below).
Political realism believes that politics, like society in general, is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. To improve society, it is first necessary to understand the laws by which society lives. The operation of these laws being impervious to our preferences, men will challenge them only at the risk of failure. Realism, believing as it does in the objectivity of the laws of politics, must also believe in the possibility of developing a rational theory that reflects, however imperfectly and one-sidedly, these objective laws. It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion-between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.
The placement of Realism under positivism is far from unproblematic however. E.H. Carr's 'What is History' was a deliberate critique of positivism, and Hans Morgenthau's aim in 'Scientific Man vs Power Politics' - as the title implies - was to demolish any conception that international politics/power politics can be studied scientifically.

Liberalism/idealism/Liberal Internationalism
Liberal international relations theory arose after World War I in response to the inability of states to control and limit war in their international relations. Early adherents include Woodrow Wilson andNorman Angell, who argued vigorously that states mutually gained from cooperation and that war was so destructive to be essentially futile.
Liberalism was not recognized as a coherent theory as such until it was collectively and derisively termed idealism by E. H. Carr. A new version of "idealism" that focused on human rights as the basis of the legitimacy of international law was advanced by Hans Köchler.
Further information: liberal internationalism

Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism seeks to update liberalism by accepting the neorealist presumption that states are the key actors in international relations, but still maintains that non-state actors (NSAs) andintergovernmental organizations (IGOs) matter. Proponents such as Maria Chattha argue that states will cooperate irrespective of relative gains, and are thus concerned with absolute gains. This also means that nations are, in essence, free to make their own choices as to how they will go about conducting policy without any international organizations blocking a nation's right to sovereignty.
Neoliberalism also contains an economic theory that is based on the use of open and free markets with little, if any, government intervention to prevent monopolies and other conglomerates from forming. The growing interdependence throughout and after the Cold War through international institutions led to neo-liberalism being defined as institutionalism, this new part of the theory being fronted by Robert Keohane and also Joseph Nye.
Further information: complex interdependence

Regime Theory
Regime theory is derived from the liberal tradition that argues that international institutions or regimes affect the behavior of states (or other international actors). It assumes that cooperation is possible in the anarchic system of states, indeed, regimes are by definition, instances of international cooperation.
While realism predicts that conflict should be the norm in international relations, regime theorists say that there is cooperation despite anarchy. Often they cite cooperation in trade, human rights and collective security among other issues. These instances of cooperation are regimes. The most commonly cited definition of regimes comes from Stephen Krasner. Krasner defines regimes as "institutions possessing norms, decision rules, and procedures which facilitate a convergence of expectations."
Not all approaches to regime theory, however are liberal or neoliberal; some realist scholars like Joseph Greico have developed hybrid theories which take a realist based approach to this fundamentally liberal theory. (Realists do not say cooperation never happens, just that it is not the norm; it is a difference of degree).
Post-positivist/reflectivist theories
International society theory (the English school)

International society theory, also called the English School, focuses on the shared norms and values of states and how they regulate international relations. Examples of such norms include diplomacy, order, and international law. Unlike neo-realism, it is not necessarily positivist. Theorists have focused particularly on humanitarian intervention, and are subdivided between solidarists, who tend to advocate it more, and pluralists, who place greater value in order and sovereignty. Nicholas Wheeler is a prominent solidarist, while Hedley Bull and Robert H. Jackson are perhaps the best known pluralists.

Social Constructivism
Social Constructivism encompasses a broad range of theories that aim to address questions ofontology, such as the Structure and agency debate, as well as questions of epistemology, such as the "material/ideational" debate that concerns the relative role of material forces versus ideas. Constructivism is not a theory of IR in the manner of neo-realism, but is instead a social theory which is used to better explain the actions taken by states and other major actors as well as the identities that guide these states and actors.
Constructivism in IR can be divided into what Hopf (1998) calls 'conventional' and 'critical' constructivism. Common to all varieties of constructivism is an interest in the role that ideational forces play. The most famous constructivist scholar, Alexander Wendt noted in a 1992 article in International Organization (later followed up by a book, Social Theory of International Politics (1999)), that "anarchy is what states make of it". By this he means that the anarchical structure that neo-realists claim governs state interaction is in fact a phenomenon that is socially constructed and reproduced by states.
For example, if the system is dominated by states that see anarchy as a life or death situation (what Wendt terms a "Hobbesian" anarchy) then the system will be characterised by warfare. If on the other hand anarchy is seen as restricted (a "Lockean" anarchy) then a more peaceful system will exist. Anarchy in this view is constituted by state interaction, rather than accepted as a natural and immutable feature of international life as viewed by neo-realist IR scholars.

Critical Theory
Critical international relations theory is the application of 'critical theory' to international relations. Proponents such as Andrew Linklater, Robert W. Cox and Ken Booth focus on the need for humanemancipation from States. Hence, it is "critical" of mainstream IR theories that tend to be state-centric.
Marxism
Marxist and Neo-Marxist theories of IR reject the realist/liberal view of state conflict or cooperation; instead focusing on the economic and material aspects. It makes the assumption that the economy trumps other concerns; allowing for the elevation of class as the focus of study. Marxists view the international system as an integrated capitalist system in pursuit of capital accumulation. Thus, the period of colonialism brought in sources for raw materials and captive markets for exports, while decolonialization brought new opportunities in the form of dependence.
Linked in with Marxist theories is dependency theory which argues that developed countries, in their pursuit of power, penetrate developing states through political advisors, missionaries, experts, and MNCs to integrate them into the capitalist system in order to appropriate natural resources and foster dependence.
Marxist theories receive scant attention in the United States where no significant socialist party ever existed. It is more common in parts of Europe and is one of the most important theoretic contributions of Latin American academia, for example through Liberation theology.

Leadership Theories
Interest Group perspective
Interest Group theory posits that the driving force behind state behavior is sub-state interest groups. Examples of interest groups include political lobbyists, the military, and the corporate sector. Group theory argues that although these interest groups are constitutive of the state, they are also causal forces in the exercise of state power.]Strategic Perspective
Strategic Perspective is a theoretical approach that views individuals as choosing their actions by taking into account the anticipated actions and responses of others with the intention of maximizing their own welfare.
Inherent bad faith model in international relations and political psychology
The "inherent bad faith model" of information processing is a theory in political psychology that was first put forth by Ole Holsti to explain the relationship between John Foster Dulles’ beliefs and his model of information processing. It is the most widely studied model of one's opponent. A state is presumed to be implacably hostile, and contra-indicators of this are ignored. They are dismissed as propaganda ploys or signs of weakness. Examples are John Foster Dulles’ position regarding the Soviet Union, or Israel’s initial position on the Palestinian Liberation Organization.


Management and sociology

Inspired by Vilfredo Pareto's seminal book Mind and Society , Barnard applied his theories of sociology to management studies. The papers here were both influential and controversial, in that Barnard concluded that human behavior in workplace settings was largely non-economic and approached ritualistic symbolism.

The program combines the Management and Organization department’s expertise in organization theory with the Sociology department’s strengths in economic, comparative-historical and cultural sociology. The joint program attracts students who want to study business and non-profit organizations using a sociological perspective, or who wish to apply management and organizational theory to core problems in sociology such as social movements, the production of culture, social structure, gender and race inequality. It is also an attractive option for students that seek to study topics in a rigorous way, at the intersection of economy and society, such as social enterprise, globalization and economic development.
The joint program’s research and career advantages build on the possibilities that come with applying disciplinary training to the new intellectual space between management and sociological theory. The formal degree synthesizes competencies of both programs, creates formal connections that facilitate a student’s access to faculty and department resources in a way that would be difficult through an informal sampling of courses; and furnishes students with an expanded choice of career and research options in professional schools and schools of arts and sciences.
Sociology of Law
New Perspectives on Gender in Society
Sociology of Culture
Economic Sociology
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Stratification, Race and Gender
Social Organization
Topics in Sociological Analysis (can be repeated for credit)
The Individual and the Organization
Social Processes in Organizations

Management consultancy is a key sector in the economic change toward a service and knowledge economy. explains the mechanisms of the management consulting market and the management of consulting firms from both economic and sociological perspectives. It also examines the strategies, marketing approaches, knowledge management and human resource management techniques of consulting firms. After outlining the relationships between transaction cost economics, signaling theory, embeddedness theory and sociological neoinstitutionalism, Thomas Armbrüster applies these theories to central questions such as: Why does the consulting sector exist and grow? Which institutions connect supply and demand? And which factors influence the relationship between clients and consultants? By applying both economic and sociological approaches, explains the general economic changes of the previous thirty years and sharpens the relationship between the academic disciplines.


II. GLOBALISATION OF BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

BASIC EXPLANATION:

An International Business Is A Business Whose Activities Are Carried Out Across national borders. This different from domestic business because A domestic business is a business whose activities are carried out with in the borders its geographical locations
THE MARKETING STRATEGIES OF THESE KIND OF BUSINESS DEPENDS ON THE NATURE OF THE BUSINESS INVOLVEMENT. FROM THE BEGINNING, THE DIFFERENCES OF THE TWO MARKETS ARE OBVIOUS FROM THE POINT OF THEIR MARKET HOST AND DEMAND DOMAIN.

DOMESTIC MARKETING:

There are four guiding principles that derives the marketing strategy
Knowledge Based Promotion
Building Loyalty
Parameters Not Formulas
Meeting the Genuine nee

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING:

International marketing goes beyond exporting and calls for direct involvement in the local marketing environment within a given country
Understanding different

DRIVING BUSINESS FORCES

There are five kinds of drivers, all based on change, that are leading international firms to the globalization of their operations.

Political
Technological
Market
Cost
Competitive
As a old saying goes, “everything starts in a small step”, this quote should be retain in the business’s mind as the start of the business cycle. It only means that the business should start in a way where the people behind it will learn to solve problems in a small little way. People that doing the strategic approaches, dictates the outcomes of the business, only because they assume and formulated the various outcomes of it.

Changes in the international economy
International economics is growing in importance as a field of study because of the rapid integration of international economic markets. Increasingly, businesses, consumers, and governments realize that their lives are affected not only by what goes on in their own town, state, or country but also by what is happening around the world. Consumers can walk into their local shops today and buy goods and services from all over the world. Local businesses must compete with these foreign products. However, many of these same businesses also have new opportunities to expand their markets by selling to a multitude of consumers in other countries. The advance of telecommunications is also rapidly reducing the cost of providing services internationally, while the Internet will assuredly change the nature of many products and services as it expands markets even further.
One simple way to see the rising importance of international economics is to look at the growth of exports in the world during the past fifty or more years.Figure 1.1, “World Exports, 1948–2008 (in Billions of U.S. Dollars)” shows the overall annual exports measured in billions of U.S. dollars from 1948 to 2008. Recognizing that one country’s exports are another country’s imports, one can see the exponential growth in outflows and inflows during the past fifty years.
Figure 1.1. World Exports, 1948–2008 (in Billions of U.S. Dollars)


However, rapid growth in the value of exports does not necessarily indicate that trade is becoming more important. A better method is to look at the share of traded goods in relation to the size of the world economy. Figure 1.2, “World Exports, 1970–2008 (Percentage of World GDP)” shows world exports as a percentage of the world gross domestic product (GDP) for the years 1970 to 2008. It shows a steady increase in trade as a share of the size of the world economy. World exports grew from just over 10 percent of the GDP in 1970 to over 30 percent by 2008. Thus trade is not only rising rapidly in absolute terms; it is becoming relatively more important too.
Figure 1.2. World Exports, 1970–2008 (Percentage of World GDP)


One other indicator of world interconnectedness can be seen in changes in the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI is foreign ownership of productive activities and thus is another way in which foreign economic influence can affect a country. Figure 1.3, “World Inward FDI Stocks, 1980–2007 (Percentage of World GDP)” shows the stock, or the sum total value, of FDI around the world taken as a percentage of the world GDP between 1980 and 2007. It gives an indication of the importance of foreign ownership and influence around the world. As can be seen, the share of FDI has grown dramatically from around 5 percent of the world GDP in 1980 to over 25 percent of the GDP just twenty-five years later.
Figure 1.3. World Inward FDI Stocks, 1980–2007 (Percentage of World GDP)


The growth of international trade and investment has been stimulated partly by the steady decline of trade barriers since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the post–World War II era, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, prompted regular negotiations among a growing body of members to reciprocally reduce tariffs (import taxes) on imported goods. During each of these regular negotiations (eight of these rounds were completed between 1948 and 1994), countries promised to reduce their tariffs on imports in exchange for concessions—that means tariff reductions—by other GATT members. When the Uruguay Round, the most recently completed round, was finalized in 1994, the member countries succeeded in extending the agreement to include liberalization promises in a much larger sphere of influence. Now countries not only would lower tariffs on goods trade but also would begin to liberalize the agriculture and services markets. They would eliminate the many quota systems—like the multifiber agreement in clothing—that had sprouted up in previous decades. And they would agree to adhere to certain minimum standards to protect intellectual property rights such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was created to manage this system of new agreements, to provide a forum for regular discussion of trade matters, and to implement a well-defined process for settling trade disputes that might arise among countries.
As of 2009, 153 countries were members of the WTO “trade liberalization club,” and many more countries were still negotiating entry. As the club grows to include more members—and if the latest round of trade liberalization talks, called the Doha Round, concludes with an agreement—world markets will become increasingly open to trade and investment.[1]
Another international push for trade liberalization has come in the form of regional free trade agreements. Over two hundred regional trade agreements around the world have been notified, or announced, to the WTO. Many countries have negotiated these agreements with neighboring countries or major trading partners to promote even faster trade liberalization. In part, these have arisen because of the slow, plodding pace of liberalization under the GATT/WTO. In part, the regional trade agreements have occurred because countries have wished to promote interdependence and connectedness with important economic or strategic trade partners. In any case, the phenomenon serves to open international markets even further than achieved in the WTO.
These changes in economic patterns and the trend toward ever-increasing openness are an important aspect of the more exhaustive phenomenon known as globalization. Globalization more formally refers to the economic, social, cultural, or environmental changes that tend to interconnect peoples around the world. Since the economic aspects of globalization are certainly the most pervasive of these changes, it is increasingly important to understand the implications of a global marketplace on consumers, businesses, and governments. That is where the study of international economics begins.
International economics is a field of study that assesses the implications of international trade, international investment, and international borrowing and lending. There are two broad subfields within the discipline: international trade and international finance.
International trade is a field in economics that applies microeconomic models to help understand the international economy. Its content includes basic supply-and-demand analysis of international markets; firm and consumer behavior; perfectly competitive, oligopolistic, and monopolistic market structures; and the effects of market distortions. The typical course describes economic relationships among consumers, firms, factory owners, and the government.
The objective of an international trade course is to understand the effects of international trade on individuals and businesses and the effects of changes in trade policies and other economic conditions. The course develops arguments that support a free trade policy as well as arguments that support various types of protectionist policies. By the end of the course, students should better understand the centuries-old controversy between free trade and protectionism.
International finance applies macroeconomic models to help understand the international economy. Its focus is on the interrelationships among aggregate economic variables such as GDP, unemployment rates, inflation rates, trade balances, exchange rates, interest rates, and so on. This field expands basic macroeconomics to include international exchanges. Its focus is on the significance of trade imbalances, the determinants of exchange rates, and the aggregate effects of government monetary and fiscal policies. The pros and cons of fixed versus floating exchange rate systems are among the important issues addressed.
This international trade textbook begins in this chapter by discussing current and past issues and controversies relating to microeconomic trends and policies. We will highlight past trends both in implementing policies that restrict trade and in forging agreements to reduce trade barriers.


Liberalization

In general, liberalization (or liberalisation) refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation.Liberalization of autocratic regimes may precede democratization (or not, as in the case of the Prague Spring).
Most often, the term is used to refer to economic liberalization, especially trade liberalization or capital market liberalization.
Although economic liberalization is often associated with privatization, the two can be quite separate processes. For example, the European Union has liberalized gas and electricity markets, instituting a system of competition; but some of the leading European energy companies (such as EDF andVattenfall) remain partially or completely in government ownership.
Liberalized and privatized public services may be dominated by just a few big companies particularly in sectors with high capital costs, or high such as water, gas and electricity. In some cases they may remain legal monopoly at least for some part of the market (e.g. small consumers).
Liberalization is one of three focal points (the others being privatization and stabilization) of theWashington Consensus's trinity strategy for economies in transition. An example of Liberalization is the "Washington Consensus" which was a set of policies created and used by Argentina
There is also a concept of hybrid liberalisation as, for instance, in Ghana where cocoa crop can be sold to a variety of competing private companies, but there is a minimum price for which it can be sold and all exports are controlled by the state

Liberalization vs Democratization
There is a distinct difference between liberalization and democratization, which are often thought to be the same concept. Liberalization can take place without democratization, and deals with a combination of policy and social change specialized to a certain issue such as the liberalization of government-held property for private purchase, whereas democratization is more politically specialized that can arise from a liberalization, but works in a broader level of government.

Govt role in development and transition

Transition and the Changing Role of Government
Vito Tanzi
Over the past decade, many centrally planned economies have set out to transform themselves into market economies. To be successful, they need to develop the necessary institutions and ensure a proper role for government.
________________________________________
While much has been written about the economic changes that must take place for centrally planned countries to become market economies, less has been written about how the economic role of the state must change. In "shock therapy," advocated by some economists at the start of the transition, the main ingredients for success were assumed to be price liberalization, macroeconomic stabilization, and privatization. Little was said about the role of the government in the new environment. A complete transformation of the economy, the institutions, and economic processes requires, in addition, that
• profitability be the guiding criterion for most investment decisions;
• activities deemed socially desirable be financed by the government; and
• the government effectively perform its core functions in the economy while withdrawing from, or drastically reducing its role in, many secondary activities.
Elements of a market economy
To function well, market economies need governments that can establish and enforce the "rules of the game," promote widely shared social objectives, raise revenues to finance public sector activities, spend the revenues productively, enforce contracts and protect property, and produce public goods. They also need a pared-down set of regulations that are clear and leave little margin for interpretation or discretion. While the guiding principle under central planning was that nothing was permitted unless explicitly authorized, the guiding principle in a market economy should be that everything is permitted unless expressly forbidden.
The transformation to a market economy is not complete until functioning fiscal institutions and reasonable and affordable expenditure programs, including basic social safety nets for the unemployed, the sick, and the elderly, are in place. Spending programs must be financed from public revenues generated—through taxation—without imposing excessive burdens on the private sector. Because the level of taxation of a country depends on, among other criteria, the extent of its economic development and the sophistication of its tax systems and administration, these constraints must be considered in discussions of public spending.
Finally, because the optimal role for government derives not just from economic considerations but also from the interplay of political and economic forces, the views of the executive branch of government should broadly match those of the legislative branch. If the two sides are miles apart on what the government should do, as they have been in Russia and some other countries, neither an optimal government role nor rational policies are likely to emerge.
Institutions in a market economy
To perform their tasks, governments in market economies need some well-developed institutions run by competent individuals and guided by appropriate incentives. The objectives of the managers must not diverge from those of the institutions, which must in turn be consistent with the public interest. Such institutions do not materialize magically. They need to be created and continually reformed. In industrial countries, it took centuries for these institutions to evolve.
When the necessary public institutions do not exist or, if they do exist, when the incentives for their managers are perverse, the government can easily become an impediment to economic activity because it ends up being used by individuals for their own ends. This is what normally happens in a corrupt system, where parts of the government apparatus are privatized for the gains of individuals or special interest groups. In such a system, the achievement of social objectives is difficult and some of the government's actions may appear predatory, such as when state employees extract bribes from citizens who need permits or authorizations.
Pre-transition environment
At the beginning of the transition, the share of GDP derived from private sector activities was small in all transition countries. It ranged from less than 1 percent in the former Czechoslovakia and Russia to almost 20 percent in Poland, compared with about 80 percent in the United States. Economic production occurred overwhelmingly in the public sector because few productive assets could be privately owned and few private activities were allowed. Prices and genuine economic profits did not play much of a role in resource allocation because the use of resources was determined by political decisions made within the planning office.
The transition countries did not need market-type tax systems to raise public revenues because the government decided how to use total output and could simply appropriate production for its own needs. Taxes were mostly transfers from some activities to others. The primary function of tax administrators was to ensure that funds were transferred to the government books and accounted for. There was no budget office, no budget law, and no treasury.
Tax revenues were obtained from three major sources—turnover taxes, taxes on enterprises, and payroll taxes—which generated large revenues (at times up to 50 percent of GDP). Under this system, most taxes were hidden, so that individuals were largely unaware that, indirectly, they were paying high taxes. Taxes were collected on the basis of negotiations with government officials. The government was free to change the rates and changed them often; when it needed extra revenue, it negotiated to raise more taxes. An enterprise in difficulty might negotiate to lower its taxes.
Particular characteristics of central planning made tax collection relatively simple: (1) the authorities' knowledge—available from the plan—of quantities of goods produced and of the prices at which they would be sold; (2) the role of the central bank in processing payments and imposing restrictions on how payments were to be settled; and (3) the concentration of economic activities in a few large enterprises. Well-defined or fixed rules of law that individuals or enterprises could appeal to when they disagreed with the actions of the government did not exist.
Progress in general reforms
How much progress have the former socialist countries made in transforming their economies? Evaluating them on the basis of the shock-therapy approach gives the impression that progress has been considerable. In general, the Eastern European and Baltic countries have progressed rapidly, while the other countries have been less successful in establishing fiscal institutions, controlling fiscal imbalances, and redefining the role of the state. But even within these groups, the differences are significant (see table). In some countries, one senses that the old system is largely gone but that nothing has taken its place, leaving an institutional vacuum.
Progress in transition, 1998
Private
sector
share of GDP Enterprises2 Markets
and trade2 Financial
institutions2
Banking reform
(percent,
mid-1998)1 Large-scale
privatization Small-scale
privatization Price
liberalization and interest rate
liberalization
________________________________________
Albania
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bulgaria 75
60
45
20
50 2
3
2
1
3 4
3
3
2
3 3
3
3
2
3 2
2+
2
1
3–
________________________________________
Croatia
Czech Republic
Estonia
Georgia
Hungary 55
75
70
60
80 3
4
4
3+
4 4+
4+
4+
4
4+ 3
3
3
3
3+ 3–
3
3+
2+
4
________________________________________
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyz Republic
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova 55
60
60
70
45 3
3
3
3
3 4
4
4
4
3+ 3
3
3
3
3 2+
3–
3–
3
2+
________________________________________
Poland
Romania
Russian Federation
Slovak Republic
Tajikistan 65
60
70
75
30 3+
3–
3+
4
2 4+
3+
4
4+
2+ 3+
3
3–
3
3 3+
2+
2
3–
1
________________________________________
Turkmenistan
Ukraine
Uzbekistan 25
55
45 2–
2+
3– 2
3+
3 2
3
2 1
2
2–
________________________________________
Source: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Transition Report, 1998, Table 2.1.
1 Private sector shares of GDP represent rough EBRD estimates, based on available statistics from both official (government) and unofficial sources. The underlying concept of private sector value added includes income generated by the activity of private registered companies, as well as by private entities engaged in informal activity, in those cases where reliable information on informal activity is available.
2 The numerical indicators range from 1 to 4, with 1 representing the least progress. They are intended to represent cumulative progress in the movement from a centrally planned economy to a market economy in each dimension, rather than the rate of change in the course of the year.

Privatization. The private sector share in GDP, almost insignificant 10 years ago, has risen dramatically in many transition countries, reaching 70 percent or more in Albania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, and the Slovak Republic. Only in Belarus, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan does it remain at 30 percent or lower. While impressive, these percentages reflect privatization of ownership but not necessarily of management. In many countries, either the prereform managers are still running the enterprises or the new managers behave as if the enterprises were still owned by the state.
One intriguing aspect of the privatization experience in these countries is that, as state ownership has declined, the rise in fiscal proceeds from privatization has not been commensurate. Although the state owned almost everything before the transition, the revenues it collected from the sale of its assets were minuscule. In Russia, for example, assets valued at $50–60 billion were reportedly bought for $1.5 billion.
There are several reasons for the low revenues. Privatization was tantamount to a fire sale to which only a privileged few were invited, and they used their positions or connections to amass enormous wealth. Thus, although constituting a fundamental step toward a market economy, privatization became an obstacle to the protection of private property—another prerequisite of a market economy.
Nomenklatura privatization—the purchase of state enterprises by former high officials of the communist party—and other similar developments, such as the purchase at low prices of valuable assets of state enterprises, have contributed to the dramatic changes in the distribution of income in these countries. Before the transition, they had some of the most even income distributions in the world, a source of pride for their leaders. Within a few years, however, some of the richest men and women in the world—some of whom also acquired substantial political power—were living a life of conspicuous consumption. More worrisome is the increase in inequality that has occurred, not because individuals who rose higher on the income scale created wealth but because they raided the government's wealth.
It is easy to guess the reaction of these countries' populations to the economic changes that created these new circumstances and to understand why the market economy, which is identified with these changes, is blamed. Many of the measures necessary to make a market economy vibrant and efficient will be seen as protecting the ill-gotten wealth of the new upper class and will encounter difficulty in the political process. It should not be surprising if privatization is not universally accepted as a sign of progress.
Price liberalization. The transition countries as a group have gone far toward liberalizing and stabilizing prices (see table). Although Belarus, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan show little progress, most countries show some, and a few—Hungary and Poland—show a great deal. However, freeing prices on some goods does not ensure increased efficiency if prices remain controlled in large and vital sectors such as energy.
Fiscal reforms. Most transition economies have implemented major fiscal reforms in the 1990s, some more successfully than others. Because a tax culture never developed in the centrally planned economies, people reacted with hostility to the introduction of an explicit tax system.
The economic reforms that took place in these countries at the beginning of the transition had a damaging impact on the existing public finances.
• They destroyed the plan, thus eliminating the information (good or bad) on quantities of goods produced and on prices. The government had to rely on other sources, including taxpayers' declarations, for this information. Tax evasion increased.
• They increased dramatically the number of producers and thus the number of potential taxpayers, as private sector activities came into existence. Tax administrations that had been used to dealing with relatively few, friendly enterprises had to deal with hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of unfriendly taxpayers. Large state enterprises, which had provided the bulk of tax revenue, declined in importance, while new small and difficult-to-tax private producers emerged as the most dynamic sector of the economy. They required both close attention from tax authorities, because of their propensity to evade taxes, and protection from unscrupulous tax officials.
• They removed the restrictions on payment methods that had existed under central planning (when all payments were channeled through the central bank). Unfortunately, tax arrears and payments in the form of barter have grown, creating major difficulties for the new system.
Because of these changes, among others, the old systems could not easily be reformed. Totally new systems were needed, and they required not just new tax laws but also new fiscal institutions, new skills, technical knowledge, and political capital. Few of the transition economies have been able to meet these requirements of a market-oriented system.
Many countries attempted to patch up the old institutions to make them behave like new ones. The poorly paid personnel of these institutions, schooled in the old ways, were often the main obstacle to change, and those who were put in charge of these institutions often had limited knowledge of how tax administrations should work in market economies. Their incentive was to maintain the old system. It would have been far better to create, from scratch, new institutions.
Many governments have failed to accept or understand that, in a market economy, a tax system should be based on laws that establish tax rates and rules for objectively defining the tax bases and should have one paramount objective—to raise revenue as efficiently and equitably as possible. Rather, these governments view the tax system as a tool that should do many things—keep failing enterprises alive, sustain employment by allowing loss-making enterprises to pay wages instead of taxes, stimulate economic activity, and so on. In some ways, the tax system replaced the plan as the key instrument for economic and social policy. Thus, in some of these countries, taxes have continued to be soft and discretionary, and key ministers have continued to spend more time dealing with individual taxpayers' tax problems than reforming the tax system. This may have sharply increased the tax burden on segments of the economy that are not able to receive preferential treatment.
In many of these countries, especially the larger ones, public spending has remained very high as a share of GDP. Once made, spending plans may be difficult to revise, especially downward. This is particularly true of pensions, health benefits, and public employment, which involve long-term commitments. One reason for many countries' high ratios of spending to GDP is that they have experienced declines in output. Another is that they have not yet formulated policies for shrinking the role of the state. The government remains engaged in far too many activities.
Conclusion
Major changes will need to occur to complete the transition. Changes can be either superficial—essentially those envisaged by the shock-therapy approach—or deep, including creation of new institutions, changes in incentives, changes in processes, and transformation of the role of government. These deep changes are much more difficult and time-consuming because they involve structural reforms and require a major modification of attitudes, incentives, and relationships.
Once a country has made the transition to a market economy, the role of government is dramatically different. It operates not through direct controls but mostly through the tax system, the budget, and a few essential regulations. The tax system must be totally reformed to make it efficient and equitable and capable of raising reasonable revenues. Expenditure policies must be brought in line with the reduced public resources. The new regulations will play a role in setting the rules of the game, regulating private pensions, and enforcing competition. Most permits, authorizations, and other mechanisms that are known to promote bribery must be eliminated, because they lead to the corruption that is widespread in many transition economies.
Given the decline in income equality in these countries and their experiences with privatization, it is likely that their governments will be asked to play a more positive role in income redistribution. Policymakers should work hard to harmonize the concept of the role of the state that seems to prevail in many of their legislatures with one that is feasible, given the existing macroeconomic conditions and level of institutional and economic development.
There must be a fuller realization that, while large fiscal deficits are often a macroeconomic problem, they become a more fundamental problem when they force governments to renege on their legal contracts by sequestering or freezing payments across the board. These actions are a corruption of the budgetary process and the market economy. When a public employee is not paid or when pensioners do not receive pensions to which they are legally entitled, something is fundamentally wrong with the whole political budgetary process.


Market economies
A market economy is an economy based on the power ofdivision of labor in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system set by supply and demand.[1]
This is often contrasted with a planned economy, in which a central government can distribute services using a fixed price system. Market economies are also contrasted with mixed economy where the price system is not entirely free but under some government control or heavily regulated, which is sometimes combined with state-led economic planning that is not extensive enough to constitute a planned economy.
In the real world, market economies do not exist in pure form, as societies and governments regulate them to varying degrees rather than allow self-regulation by market forces.The term free-market economy is sometimes used synonymously with market economy,] but, as Ludwig Erhard once pointed out, this does not preclude an economy from having socialist attributes opposed to alaissez-faire system.
Different perspectives exist as to how strong a role the government should have in both guiding the market economy and addressing the inequalities the market produces. For example, there is no universal agreement on issues such as central banking, andwelfare.
The term market economy is not identical to capitalism where a corporation hires workers as a labour commodity to produce material wealth and boost shareholder profits. Market mechanisms have been utilized in a handful of socialist states, such as China, Yugoslavia and even Cuba to a very limited extent.
It is also possible to envision an economic system based on independent producers, cooperative, democratic worker ownershipand market allocation of final goods and services; the labour-managed market economy is one of several proposed forms ofmarket socialism.


Wide spread programme to de-regulate economies to reform

There is no one in control of the world's economy. And even if there were, there is no set of commonly agreed principles upon which governance could be based. We have some idea about what to do about mitigating the risks of, say, deep sea oil drilling or the overfishing of the oceans. But when it comes to how to organise the vast flows of trade and finance whose relative orderliness and growth are so crucial for prosperity and employment everywhere, there is an intellectual and political vacuum.
It is not as if the issues are unaired. Indeed, at Davos this year – the annual get-together of world political and business leaders that increasingly reminds me of our party conferences in its combination of sonorous speechifying and backstairs wheeler-dealing between alpha males on the make – you could hardly escape talking about them. Whether on the main platform, in the fringe meetings or in the bars, everyone was wringing their hands about too much public and private debt, too much underhand manipulation of exchange rates, whether bankers are right to insist it is back to business as usual and the astonishing rise in food and energy prices.
But if there is lots of talk, there is no agreement on what solid principles and governance are needed to secure change and underpin recovery. The fallback position on which pessimists or optimists can agree is to nod sagely that, confronted by whatever problem, there needs to be better co-ordination. Like apple pie and motherhood, co-ordination is the lowest common denominator to which even the most curmudgeonly Davosian can subscribe, but it raises all the questions. Who is to decide what the problem is and to which a co-ordinated response is required or how the pain should be distributed?
This matters. There are more than 200 million people unemployedworldwide, of whom 78 million are under 24. According to the International Labour Organisation, there are 1.5 billion people in vulnerable employment. The world population is going to rise by another 2 billion in the next 40 years, almost entirely in Asia and Africa. What are they going to eat, drink and do for energy when even current levels of food production, water supply and energy production are inadequate? As Egypt's President Mubarak fights for his political life from street protests fuelled in part by sheer economic desperation, suddenly the questions are no longer for Davos's seminar rooms – they are urgent and real.
Answers will have to encompass what currency the world will use to do its international business in. Currently, this is the dollar – as US treasury secretary John Connally famously said in 1971, our currency but your problem. The US is successfully spending its way out of recession and printing dollars in vast quantities, gloriously indifferent to the impact on all the countries and companies which hold dollars as their reserves. Can this continue? And what would replace the dollar?
Meanwhile, the Chinese are spending their way to yet more economic growth while rigging their exchange rate to boost their exports. I met any number of central bankers and finance ministers here from emerging economies who feel they have to rig their currencies just as the Chinese do, partly because they dare not let the Chinese steal a march on them and partly because they want to follow what seems to be a successful model of economic development. But whatever is unsustainable is sooner or later not sustained and there is a lot of unsustainable activity out there.
Last but not least, there are the super-powerful bankers who are exploiting the vacuum to make their super-profits again, insisting that the crisis is well and truly behind us. There was a lot of shock in Britain recently when Bob Diamond, the new CEO of Barclays, told a parliamentary select committee that the time for remorse from bankers was over. Evidently, he is not alone. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, led the pack at Davos, saying that banker-bashing must now stop and that banks needed to be left free in order to finance recovery. He even had the gall to insist that the main risk to the world economy was government debt and the US's $1.5 trillion budget deficit in particular.
Dimon is right to point to the risk, but criminally wrong to neglect the banks' role in creating the recession, of which the US budget deficit is the consequence, and doubly wrong never to challenge the power of the bond markets and financiers. Yet without a $1.5 trillion US budget deficit and government guarantees to the banking system, there would be no US and world recovery, no world banking system and no cocksure Jamie Dimon. Economist Simon Johnson, formerly chief economist at the IMF, regards him as the most dangerous man in America, ringleader of the intellectual and business forces that have so damaged the world.
Never has the interconnection between raw power and ideas been so obvious. Johnson can detail how every economist who takes a deregulatory, pro big bank line has received fees and income from the banks for his or her work, a stance that hardly wins him many friends. But it is a matter of dismay. It is absolutely obvious that today's banks are far too big, operate with far too little capital and deal in financial instruments that do far too little to finance genuine trade and investment. That is not a view heard in Davos.
Nor is there any compelling blueprint for how to organise the world's financial system any better. There is the world as it is – multiple forms of capitalist economies deploying raw power to do just as they please – and a utopia of freely floating exchange rates, free trade, free financial markets and tightly controlled government budget deficits. The model doesn't exist and even if it did we know enough about modern finance to know it would lead to another disaster. There needs to be a different prospectus that offers principles and governance for this imperfect world as it is.
The French promise action during their presidency of the G20 this year, but I doubt they will manage to move the Davos consensus. Indeed, David Cameron and George Osborne won an extremely warm response here as champions of that same consensus around which they have organised the coalition government's economic policies. Davos is well-meaning; it genuinely wants an inclusive, less unequal, more sustainable world, but balks at willing the means. I have been coming here on and off for more than 20 years and share the view of one battle-hardened veteran British business attendee: on the big calls, Davos is nearly always wrong. In which case, we should all be concerned, not least Mr Cameron, the audience's applause still ringing in his ears.

Regulations in the area of global business environment
The long-delayed clearance for the country’s biggest foreign direct investment project will give a boost to other infrastructure projects
i. In a sluggish retail environment - albeit one in which consumers are more demanding and interactive than ever - Irish companies are starting to realise that they need to manage their customer relationships very carefully indeed.

A new survey from Microsoft has found that seven out of eight companies now have some kind of official ‘‘CRM’’ (customer relationship management) system, even though a significant minority are still managing customer data with systems more suited to managing finances or inventories than people.

The focus on CRM, however, marks a significant change from the last time Microsoft did a survey of this kind, which was five years ago.

Back then, more than half of companies had no CRM system at all.

But 57 per cent of companies in the latest survey said they had invested in CRM in the last three years, while four out of five said they had done so in the last five years.

However, 40 per cent cited as their biggest challenge the difficulty of getting employees to update customer details.

More than 400 companies, most of them small or medium enterprises, were involved in the survey, which is being launched to help publicise a new user-friendly online CRM service from Microsoft.

It’s an unusual offering in that it is suitable for even the smallest company. Hosted by Microsoft, it can be obtained From around ¤30 a month.

Companies can integrate social networking with this CRM system, keeping an eye, not only on customers’ e-mails to them, but also on their tweets and LinkedIn and Facebook postings, insofar as they can be accessed.

‘‘Embrace it, don’t fear it," said Microsoft’s Karl O’Leary, who added that he was well aware of how nervous small business owners could be about new technology. ‘‘But if you don’t confront that fear, it’s going to be very hard to grow your business."

The new online CRM product, he said, was a pragmatic response to what was needed in the market, and would make it more realistic for SMEs to achieve their goals of scaling their businesses globally.

This view was echoed by the Small Firms Association. Its director, Avine McNally, said it was crucial for smaller firms to take a more sophisticated approach to customer relations.

According to McNally, there are still firms for which CRM means keeping notes on scraps of paper. Companies, she said, had to stop regarding CRM as some sort of IT project that had nothing to do with sales and marketing.

‘‘What we say to members is that, if you’re serious about your customers, you have to be serious about CRM too," she said.

Microsoft has produced a report into CRM usage in Ireland, containing contributions from Marketing Institute chief executive Tom Trainor, social media strategist Krishna De and others.

Trainor emphasised the importance of retaining customers in the present business climate, and noted that it was estimated that winning a new customer was five to eight times more expensive than retaining an existing one. ‘‘Farming is always more efficient than hunting," he wrote.

Managing customers meant managing them at every point of interaction, he added. ‘‘Your overall market positioning could be right but, if customer service is slow, it damages your brand," he wrote.

Krishna De noted that, while some Irish companies had looked at social media as a marketing tool, they had not integrated these media with customer support services.

She also said that some global organisations had done precisely this, with Dell, for instance, operating multiple Twitter accounts to cover areas including PR, customer support and sales.

‘‘The first step is to listen to what prospects or customers are saying online about you, your competitors and similar products and services," said De. ‘‘You then need to take the insights . . . and determine when and how you will respond.

This will, in many cases, mean that you need to establish processes and procedures to integrate with your current customer relationship management approach."

III. Forein Direct Investments

Foreign direct investment (FDI) or foreign investment refers to long term participation by country A into country B. It usually involves participation in management, joint-venture, transfer of technology andexpertise. There are two types of FDI: inward foreign direct investment and outward foreign direct investment, resulting in a net FDI inflow (positive or negative) and "stock of foreign direct investment", which is the cumulative number for a given period. Direct investment excludes investment through purchase of shares
Foreign direct investment (FDI) rules in agriculture may be relaxed, albeit only in non-farm wasteland and degraded lands.
The Union ministry of agriculture and the department of land resources under the ministry of rural development have given "in principle approval" to a proposal of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to invite FDI for developing non-arable land through better technology into fertile and cultivable land.
Currently FDI in agriculture is prohibited, barring allied sectors like horticultre, floriculture, pisciculture, animal husbandry, aquaculture and development of seeds, vegetables and mushrooms under controlled conditions..
The proposal mooted by DIPP, the foreign investment policy-making body under the ministry of commerce, aims at coping with the problem of limited arable land and food shortage in the country. Under this proposal to be classified as investment in land and agriculture, a foreign company could invest through an Indian company under a joint venture or technical tie-up for imparting the necessary technology for converting waste land into fertile land. "The investments could be in drylands like deserts or marshy land or salty and barren land,” said an official.
The department of agriculture has stated in its comments to DIPP that the nature of technology to be used, its proven track record in other countries and time line of the project would be essential before drawing up the final blueprint for the proposal. And, if any land happens to be owned by a farmer or individual or an entity, he or it should be treated as a stakeholder in the final proposal or venture.
It has also suggested DIPP look into ownership issues, as to whether any public sector undertaking, through the department of land resources or agriculture or relevant state government, may be made a partner in the project to take care of public welfare. “In what form the FDI comes, whether in a new company or existing company and whether the operations of the existing company supplements agriculture is to be examined before inviting FDI,” said an official source.
FDI is a measure of foreign ownership of productive assets, such as factories, mines and land. Increasing foreign investment can be used as one measure of growing economic globalization. The figure below shows net inflows of foreign direct investment in the United States. The largest flows of foreign investment occur between the industrialized countries (North America, Western Europe andJapan). But flows to non-industrialized countries are increasing sharply.
US International Direct Investment Flows:
Period FDI Outflow FDI Inflows Net
1960-69 $ 42.18 bn $ 5.13 bn + $ 37.04 bn
1970-79 $ 122.72 bn $ 40.79 bn + $ 81.93 bn
1980-89 $ 206.27 bn $ 329.23 bn - $ 122.96 bn
1990-99 $ 950.47 bn $ 907.34 bn + $ 43.13 bn
2000-07 $ 1,629.05 bn $ 1,421.31 bn + $ 207.74 bn
Total $ 2,950.69 bn $ 2,703.81 bn + $ 246.88 bn
Types
A foreign direct investor may be classified in any sector of the economy and could be any one of the following:
 an individual;
 a group of related individuals;
 an incorporated or unincorporated entity;
 a public company or private company;
 a group of related enterprises;
 a government body;
 an estate (law), trust or other societal organisation; or
 any combination of the above.

 Methods
The foreign direct investor may acquire voting power of an enterprise in an economy through any of the following methods:
 by incorporating a wholly owned subsidiary or company
 by acquiring shares in an associated enterprise
 through a merger or an acquisition of an unrelated enterprise
 participating in an equity joint venture with another investor or enterprise
Foreign direct investment incentives may take the following forms:[citation needed]
 low corporate tax and income tax rates
 tax holidays
 other types of tax concessions
 preferential tariffs
 special economic zones
 EPZ - Export Processing Zones
 Bonded Warehouses
 Maquiladoras
 investment financial subsidies
 soft loan or loan guarantees
 free land or land subsidies
 relocation & expatriation subsidies
 job training & employment subsidies
 infrastructure subsidies
 R&D support
 derogation from regulations (usually for very large projects)

Global Foreign Direct Investment
UNCTAD said that no significant growth of Global FDI. In 2010 was $1,122 billion and in 2009 was $1.114 billion. The figures was 25 percent below the pre-crisis average between 2005 to 2007.

Foreign direct investment in the United States
"Invest in America" is an initiative of the US Department of Commerce and aimed to promote the arrival of foreign investors to the country.
The “Invest in America” policy is focused on:
 Facilitating investor queries.
 Carrying out maneuvers to aid foreign investors.
 Provide support both at local and state levels.
 Address concerns related to the business environment by helping as an ombudsman in Washington DC for the international venture community.
 Offering policy guidelines and helping getting access to the legal system.
The United States is the world’s largest recipient of FDI. More than $325.3 billion in FDI flowed into the United States in 2008, which is a 37 percent increase from 2007. The $2.1 trillion stock of FDI in the United States at the end of 2008 is the equivalent of approximately 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).55
Benefits of FDI in America: In the last 6 years, over 4000 new projects and 630,000 new jobs have been created by foreign companies, resulting in close to $314 billion in investment.Unarguably, US affiliates of foreign companies have a history of paying higher wages than US corporations. Foreign companies have in the past supported an annual US payroll of $364 billion with an average annual compensation of $68,000 per employee.
Increased US exports through the use of multinational distribution networks. FDI has resulted in 30% of jobs for Americans in the manufacturing sector, which accounts for 12% of all manufacturing jobs in the US.
Affiliates of foreign corporations spent more than $34 billion on research and development in 2006 and continue to support many national projects. Inward FDI has led to higher productivity through increased capital, which in turn has led to high living standards.
Foreign direct investment in China
Starting from a baseline of less than $19 billion just 20 years ago, FDI in China has grown to over $300 billion in the first 10 years. China has continued its massive growth and is the leader among all developing nations in terms of FDI Even though there was a slight dip in FDI in 2009 as a result of the global slowdown, 2010 has again seen investments increase.
Well established international corporations
In perhaps her first public appearance since becoming chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, last week Leslie Seidman laid out her "three highest priorities" through June 30. Remember that date. Not long after that, the Securities and Exchange Commission could reveal whether it intends to require all U.S. public companies to incorporate international financial reporting standards into the current U.S. financial reporting system.
Speaking on a FASB Webcast, Seidman, who became the top U.S. accounting standard-setter on December 23, said the board's main tasks for the first two quarters of 2011 are to achieve, along with the International Accounting Standards Board, melded standards in three areas: financial instruments, revenue recognition, and leasing.
target date for achieving convergence on those three matters would be June 30. "To me, the June 2011 target date signals our strong commitment to work as hard as we can to develop final standards on these projects as efficiently as we possibly can," she said.
But since the projects "represent key issues for many companies and nonprofit organizations, I want to underscore that we want these standards to provide useful information and to be understandable and implementable at a reasonable cost," she added. "Let me assure you, if it takes a little longer to reach that comfort level, we will take that time."
On Thursday, speaking at a Standard & Poor's conference on hot topics in accounting, IASB member Patricia McConnell expressed relief that FASB wasn't regarding the June deadline as absolutely fixed. "Yes, we do have a target date of June 30. But if we're not done, we're not done," she said, adding that none of the standards would be effective before 2013.

Population ,poverty and health
Poverty is the lack of basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter, because of the inability to afford them.[1][2] This is also referred to as absolute poverty or destitution. Relative poverty is the condition of having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages. About 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty; before the industrial revolution, poverty had mostly been the norm.
Poverty reduction has historically been a result of economic growth as increased levels of production, such as modern industrial technology, made more wealth available for those who were otherwise too poor to afford them.Also, investments in modernizing agriculture and increasing yields is considered the core of the antipoverty effort, given three-quarters of the world's poor are ruralfarmers.
Today, economic liberalization includes extending property rights, especially to land, to the poor, and making financial services, notably savings, accessible.[8][9][10] Inefficient institutions, corruption and political instability can also discourage investment. Aid and government support in health, educationand infrastructure helps growth by increasing human and physical capital.[4]
There many definitions of poverty depending on the context of the situation and the views of the person giving the definition. These are some from various sources including a well-known development scholar. Poverty is also often divided into relative poverty and absolute poverty. Poverty can also be defined as a condition wherein a person cannot satisfy his or her basic needs, namely, food, shelter, clothing, health and education.
Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life.
—World Bank
Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.
—United Nations
Poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services. It includes a lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterized by lack of participation in decision making and in civil, social and cultural life. It occurs in all countries: as mass poverty in many developing countries, pockets of poverty amid wealth in developed countries, loss of livelihoods as a result of economic recession, sudden poverty as a result of disaster or conflict, the poverty of low-wage workers, and the utter destitution of people who fall outside family support systems, social institutions and safety nets.
— World Summit on Social Development
To meet nutritional requirements, to escape avoidable disease, to be sheltered, to be clothed, to be able to travel, and to be educated.
—Amartya Sen
People are living in poverty if their income and resources (material, cultural and social) are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living which is regarded as acceptable by Irish society generally. As a result of inadequate income and resources people may be excluded and marginalised from participating in activities which are considered the norm for other people in society.
—Government of Ireland

i. Globalisation Dimensions

ii. Confidentiality and conventional diplomacy go together. As diplomacy is about communication and negotiation involving governments, they have inevitably to undertake their sensitive work outside the media's reach.
iii. However, the 21st century is characterised by globalisation, assertive public opinion, an ever present 24x7 media and Web 2.0 technology. This combination lends increased significance to public diplomacy. Recognising the magnitude of the changing scene, India has begun well, but it has miles to go for securing optimal projection of its foreign policy concerns.
iv. What is public diplomacy? Barack Obama told the Indian Parliament that he was “mindful” he might not be standing before it as the U.S. President “had it not been for Gandhi[ji] and the message he shared and inspired with America and the world.” Michelle Obama won hearts by dancing with Indian children. Carla Bruni, the French President's wife, communicated by doing a perfect namaste, besides informing the public that she prayed for “another son” at a shrine near Agra. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao proclaimed that China and India “would always be friends and would never be rivals.” Our distinguished guests were thus using tools of public diplomacy to connect with their hosts in India.
v. Public diplomacy is a web of mechanisms through which a country's foreign policy positions are transmitted to its target audiences. The term was first used by U.S. diplomat and scholar Edmund Guillion in 1965. He saw it as “dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy, the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries …” Indian diplomats, however, rightly maintain that public diplomacy has to do with both foreign and domestic audiences. When you put out a story on television, blog or YouTube today, it is consumed by a university student in Bhopal as much as by a financial analyst in Toronto.
vi. Delhi conference: Recently the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) hosted, in collaboration with the CMS Academy, a two-day conference and workshop in Delhi to explore the challenges of “Public Diplomacy in the Information Age.” Attended by a cross-section of scholars, communication experts, media personalities, business leaders and diplomats, it aimed at crafting a new understanding of how India could exploit the full potential of public diplomacy.
vii. Participants, including this writer, gained much from the presence of four top experts in public diplomacy and communication in the world today, namely Nicholas J. Cull and Philip Seib, both professors from the University of Southern California, Prof Eytan Gilboa from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Nik Gowing, chief presenter, BBC. Select panels of Indian and foreign speakers, interacting with an informed audience, examined diverse themes such as “Public Diplomacy in a Globalized World,” “21st Century Statecraft and Soft Power,” “24x7 News and Public diplomacy,” “Web 2.0 and the New Public Diplomacy,” and “Corporate Diplomacy.” Three workshops were also held focussing on fascinating aspects of the subject. It may be useful to recall the key takeaways for a broader audience interested in foreign policy projection.
viii. Key conclusions: First, public diplomacy and “new public diplomacy” (which uses social media tools for reaching younger audiences) need to be situated in the post-Cold War context. With a clear trend towards multipolarity, globalisation and democracy, non-state actors, NGOs, business enterprises and others have been playing an increasingly important role. The emergence of global television and Internet-based communication have now empowered governments to reach out to constituencies as spin doctors of yesterday could hardly dream of. Hence the importance of the medium has grown enormously.
ix. Second, the message nevertheless retains its significance: if it is not clear and credible, it will not get through. The former Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, suggested that while “Incredible India” has been a great campaign, what we needed was to project a “credible India.”
x. Third, the link between public diplomacy and foreign policy formulation is inextricable. If policy is flawed, projection alone cannot help. Therefore, senior public diplomacy officials should have a seat on the policy-making table.
xi. Fourth, thinking about how to put across one's message has undergone a fundamental change. The advice now is to transcend government-to-public communication and, instead, focus on two-way communication, on “advancing conversations.” Public diplomacy is about listening and articulating. Beyond the traditional media, the cyber space sustains a “Republic of Internet” and a “Nation of Facebook” which cannot be ignored. If the government does not cater to their needs, someone else, possibly with an adversarial orientation, will. Perhaps this perspective led the MEA to embark on a new journey last year, establishing an interactive website, a Twitter channel, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, a BlogSpot page and a presence in online publishing sites like Scribd and Issuu. These may still be “baby steps,” but they are laudable.
xii. Fifth, the importance of speed in communication was repeatedly stressed. “Tyranny of deadline,” impact of the ticker, “Breaking news” and “citizen-journalist” were referred to. Image managers no longer have the luxury of time nor leisurely weekends. Addressing them, a television professional put it bluntly: “If we don't sleep, you don't sleep!”
xiii. Sixth, management tools such as planning and evaluation are essential for devising and assessing the impact of public diplomacy strategies. They clearly form part of a continuing process, to be handled with transparency, integrity and professionalism.
xiv. Finally, the concept of nation branding is highly relevant to the task of projecting India.
xv. After the conference, Prof. Seib, a keynote speaker, reportedly observed that India lacked “a consistent profile that it can present to the world,” that it did not have “a comprehensive public diplomacy strategy.” I find it difficult to accept this assessment. India's foray into public diplomacy in the digital era may be new, but it can certainly lay claim to a decent record of projection abroad. Turning Western public opinion in Delhi's favour prior to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 is a shining example. India has a broader conception of public diplomacy encompassing all facets: media, cultural, educational, and economic and Diaspora diplomacy. Speaking at the conference, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao aptly observed that “the tradition of public outreach and interpretation of foreign policy positions” had been “ingrained in our conditioning as diplomats.”
xvi. Tasks ahead: In the MEA, projection is driven by the External Publicity division as well as the Public Diplomacy division. Beyond them, the bulk of work is handled by our missions abroad, often the unnoticed members of our collective choir.

The state of the literature

They all perform very well, but room for improvement exists. Our ambassadors should be trained to become savvier at handling TV interviews. Our diplomats should rapidly acquire skills relating to Web 2.0 technology. The rising importance of non-state actors should be factored in fully.Finally, the striking disconnect between India's self-perception and the world's view should be addressed. Amidst unprecedented visits by leaders of all P-5 states within five months, our nation's attention was primarily focussed on internal concerns — scams, onion prices and excessive politics. Assuming we want India to become a truly Great Power, we, as a polity, must deepen interest in world affairs. The MEA would do well to use all its weaponry of public diplomacy to increase our awareness of the world and India's place in it. It must sustain its initiatives to project India's soft power. The task begins at home!
Trade Dimensions

Because change is the one constant in today’s marketplace, consumer goods companies are challenged with constantly evaluating their business while maintaining master customer files and integrating data with promotional and marketing information.
Trade Dimensions® provides the unique Nielsen TDLinx coding structure of retail/on-premise trade channels that has been widely embraced by the consumer goods industry. Working these codes along with our comprehensive, up-to-date location database can help your organization target execution, synchronize activity, and thoroughly evaluate customer data based on standard county-based market definitions, including media, scanner and sales geographies.
Trade Dimensions supports your core marketing initiatives:
Performance Tracking and Measurement Manage performance with a locations database that aggregates tracking information. Data is updated daily and delivered monthly.
Distribution Strategy and Execution Ease route planning and direct store delivery with location-specific sales volume.
Building B2B Relationships Facilitate communication with manufacturers and service providers.
Accurate Retail Data - Trade Dimensions-leading provider of retail information data for consumer package goods companies, in-store promotion/marketing agencies, commercial real estate

International Relations
International Relations (IR) (occasionally referred to asInternational Studies (IS)) [1] is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs). It is both an academicand public policy field, and can be either positive or normative as it both seeks to analyze as well as formulate the foreign policy of particular states. It is often considered a branch of political science (especially after 1988 UNESCO nomenclature), but an important sector of academia prefer to treat it as an interdisciplinary field of study.
Apart from political science, IR draws upon such diverse fields aseconomics, history, international law, philosophy, geography,social work, sociology & social sciences, anthropology,psychology, women's studies/gender studies, and cultural studies/ culturology. It involves a diverse range of issues including but not limited to: globalization, state sovereignty, ecologicalsustainability, nuclear proliferation, nationalism, economic development, global finance, terrorism, organized crime, human security, foreign interventionism and human rights.
The history of international relations is often traced back to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, where the modern state system was developed. Prior to this, the European medieval organization of political authority was based on a vaguely hierarchical religious order. Westphalia instituted the legal concept of sovereignty, which essentially meant that rulers, or the legitimate sovereigns, had no internal equals within a defined territory and no external superiors as the ultimate authority within the territory's sovereign borders. A simple way to view this is that sovereignty says, "I'm not allowed to tell you what to do and you are not allowed to tell me what to do." Classical Greek and Roman authority at times resembled the Westphalian system, but both lacked the notion of sovereignty.
Westphalia encouraged the rise of the independent nation-state, the institutionalization of diplomacyand armies. This particular European system was exported to the Americas, Africa, and Asia viacolonialism and the "standards of civilization". The contemporary international system was finally established through decolonization during the Cold War. However, this is somewhat over-simplified. While the nation-state system is considered "modern", many states have not incorporated the system and are termed "pre-modern".
Further, a handful of states have moved beyond the nation-state system and can be considered "post-modern". The ability of contemporary IR discourse to explain the relations of these different types of states is disputed. "Levels of analysis" is a way of looking at the international system, which includes the individual level, the domestic nation-state as a unit, the international level of transnational and intergovernmental affairs, and the global level.
What is explicitly recognized as International Relations theory was not developed until after World War I, and is dealt with in more detail below. IR theory, however, has a long tradition of drawing on the work of other social sciences. The use of capitalizations of the "I" and "R" in International Relations aims to distinguish the academic discipline of International Relations from the phenomena of international relations. Many cite Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War as the inspiration for realist theory, with Hobbes' Leviathan and Machiavelli's The Prince providing further elaboration.
Similarly, liberalism draws upon the work of Kant and Rousseau, with the work of the former often being cited as the first elaboration of democratic peace theory. Though contemporary human rights is considerably different than the type of rights envisioned under natural law, Francisco de Vitoria, Hugo Grotius and John Locke offered the first accounts of universal entitlement to certain rights on the basis of common humanity. In the twentieth century, in addition to contemporary theories of liberal internationalism, Marxism has been a foundation of international relations.
Study of IR
Initially, international relations as a distinct field of study was almost entirely British-centered. IR only emerged as a formal academic ‘discipline’ in 1918 with the founding of the first ‘chair’ (professorship) in IR - the Woodrow Wilson Chair at Aberystwyth, University of Wales, rapidly followed by establishment of IR at US universities and Geneva, Switzerland. from an endowment given by David Davies, became the first academic position dedicated to IR. In the early 1920s, the London School of Economics' department of International Relations was founded at the behest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker.
The first university entirely dedicated to the study of IR was the Graduate Institute of International Studies (now the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies), which was founded in 1927 to form diplomats associated to the League of Nations, established in Geneva some years before. The Graduate Institute of International Studies offered one of the first Ph.D. degrees in international relations. Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service is the oldest international relations faculty in the United States, founded in 1919. The Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago was the first to offer a graduate degree, in 1928.

Developing and integrating Approach to globalization-A Case Analysis

Despite academic and media analysis of the concept of globalization, discussions about this topic has still preoccupied the scientific and decision-making centers in Iran. Some governmental institutions have been instructed to compile the principles and intellectual fundamentals as well as approaches that prepare the grounds for appropriate decision-making and policy-making in this field. Hence it is necessary to study this topic from various viewpoints and shed light on its different angles in the light of its strong and weak points as well as opportunities and threats.
The Islamic Revolution took shape on the basis of universal ideas of Islam. The message of Islam is universal and is not confined to the parochial territorial, ethnic, and racial frameworks. Simultaneous with the victory of the Islamic Revolution in the later decades of the twentieth century, rapid technological developments formed an interdependent world and there was ample talk of the concept of globalization to the extent that these decades were called the era of globalization, for during those days the issue of globalization occupied a major chunk of scientific discussions and debate in the world and a large number of books and articles were written about it and still hot discussions are going on in the scientific circles and universities of the world. In practice we observe the popular opposition, particularly by the workers and peasants, students and environmentalists. There are a number of cultural questions and ambiguities about this concept and related terms. The political and scientific elite, the academic circles and policy-making centers and officials as well as the media and even the common citizens talk about it.
Regarding the nature of globalization, despite the fact that there are several works on this topic and their number is increasing everyday, there is not yet any single definition about globalization and there is no consensus about it among the scholars. Just like other theoretical subjects, this topic too faces a kind of ambiguity. In fact it is very difficult and somehow ambitious to give a clear definition of the term globalization.
Anthony Giddens, the renowned British sociologist, maintains that this concept has hardly been understood. Some other writers believe that this concept has no meaning or the concept of globalization is a new term for the phenomena already known with other names.[i] There are various viewpoints about globalization, each focusing on a specific aspect. Some writers maintain that the main feature of globalization is fundamental changes in the global capitalist order in the arenas of production, distribution, trade, finance and technology which can be termed as transition from organized capitalism to unorganized capitalism on global level. In other words, they define it as a process which is creating a new social atmosphere.[ii]
Paul Cook and Colin Patrick pay attention to the considerable enhancement of interdependence of the countries. They define globalization as such: Expansion of various relations and ties among the governments and societies that form the global system. Globalization is a process through which events, decisions, and activities of one part of the world can have some implications for the societies of a completely distinct part of the world.[iii] In fact globalization is defined from various angles, but most of the definitions pay attention to the communication aspect. From this angle they consider globalization as a concept that refers to the shrinking of the world in time and space.
On the basis of a definition, globalization is a predictable move for commencement and correction of the information dissemination movement by new information technologies at regional and international levels.[iv]
Anthony Mcgrew confirming that globalization is a multidimensional phenomena,[v] pays due attention to the issue of communication, defining globalization as the increasing mutual communication. He introduces the following items as the components of his definition:
1 – Under the conditions of globalization, social, political and economic activities influence and are influenced by the trans-national events.
2 – Globalization intensifies mutual interactions, creating a new global system.
3 – The growth of intensity and extent of communications leads to the elimination of the distance between domestic and international issues. In fact communications become so deep that the people on the side of their local lives feel a global aspect of their lives as well.
4 – Growing communications create some issues at transnational level which can be settled and handled only through global cooperation (proliferation of weapons and the problem of drug trafficking are among such issues).
5 – The volume and intensity of communications create an intertwined network between the governments and international institutions, communities, non-governmental organizations, and multinational corporations. These networks lead to the creation of global system and this system creates systemic limitations for the activities of the actors, reducing their autonomy.[vi]
Of course the explanations given under the said definition are the consequences of globalization that have been referred to by -Mcgrew and that we will take up below
Globalization has also been defined from other aspects. Many thinkers have defined globalization only from economic point of view. For instance, on the basis of a definition, globalization means economy, development and domination of an economic production system on the societies of the world. Although this system does not rely on a single country, or a single source of economic-political power, it is mainly under the influence of the most powerful and effective economic-political units in the world.[vii]
On the basis of another definition, globalization in simple language means unity of market, labor and production market, money and capital.[viii]
Cultural globalization has been defined as a process that facilitates the transformation of cultural features to a part of the global cultural order and consequently the local cultures will be either eliminated or renovated.[ix]
Many thinkers maintain that globalization in its cultural aspect is unification of various cultures and formation of a single global culture. This definition has drawn lots of criticisms and many consider the formation of such a culture neither possible nor likely.
From political point of view, globalization means dilution of national borders, move towards a global government and reduction of the roles of nation-states in the interest of the transnational corporations. In political aspect of globalization attention is paid to the role of governments in the new world and many maintain that globalization will weaken or even cause the disintegration of the states. On the contrary, some others maintain that this will never happen. Indeed the phenomenon of nation-state has drawn the attention of the scholars in most definitions of the globalization.
Overall, the best and most comprehensive definition of globalization is the one which pays attention to all aspects and looks at the issue from different aspects in a holistic approach. Without any doubt globalization has various consequences in various fields. For instance one cannot look at the cultural globalization without paying attention to political or economic aspects of globalization.
Globalization or Globalism?
One of the fundamental questions about the concept of globalization is whether this phenomenon is a process stemming from the processes of development of human societies through the passage of time, or is it a project that has been designed by some Western countries for whose prosperity the great powers play a great deal? In sum, is globalization a project or a process?
The opponents of globalization, particularly in the South, consider it a brainchild of the strong industrial countries through which they try to dominate and exploit the underdeveloped world.
Contrary to the opponents, the advocates of globalization consider it an unavoidable process in which all countries are allowed and at the same time forced to accompany it and would enjoy its numerous advantages as well.
Commenting on whether transformation of the world into a single space should be considered a Western project, B. Oxford, alluding to a statement by Giddens, says: Giddens unhappily refers to the fact that the consequences of modernism entails nothing except the expansion of Western institutions across the world along with the elimination of the local cultures.
He maintains that the global processes more than expanding modernism have functioned as its accelerator.[x]
Another definition put forth in this regard is: globalization is a process in which some big powers decide in the direction of their own interests to prepare a conscious plan and define some objectives for this process. In fact they overburden the project of protection of their own interests on this process. Just like mounting the project of colonialism on development and progress in the past.[xi]
Probably the following definition of globalization may seem more interesting: globalization is just like a tumultuous river that the more it goes forward, the more it becomes tumultuous and those who are equipped with appropriate tools and capabilities can ride and utilize the wave better than those who lack such tools.
Without any doubt, one cannot overlook the role of the big powers in this process, for some of these powers wish to change the direction of globalization in their own interests.[xii] However, it does not mean that the entire globalization process has been created by the West. Evidently, the big powers and the rich have taken any opportunity in the course of history to increase their power and interests. Currently, the West, relying on its capabilities and power in various aspects (particularly with regard to production of idea and creativity), tries to manage this process towards its own interests. It does not mean that weaker countries do not utilize this process, but the level, degree and kind of interests vary from one country to another.
Backgrounds of Globalization
A) Information Revolution – The considerable expansion and development of information technology has turned the world into a global village and it is no more possible just like in the past to close the doors and follow policies hidden from the eyes of others.
The growing power of computers, computer software and revolution in the realm of information technology in various ways has in effect helped the condensation of the world. The transportation of goods, financial and personal currents have become very rapid due to the technological progress (particularly in the field of information technology)[xiii] to the extent that information revolution has prepared the most appropriate grounds for acceleration and signification of globalization.
B) Economic backgrounds – Free flow of capital and goods, considerable increase in the commercial and economic communications on global scale, rapid growth of multinational corporations, dilution of national borders, growth of the volume of financial markets, more and more internationalization of capital, dilution of the indigenous nature and color of the goods, reduction of expenses, and finally integration of industrial and economic markets of the world,[xiv] all and all have played an important role in signification of this process.
The formation of GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) in October 1947 (Ottawa Conference) was a great stride towards globalization (particularly from economic point of view). But the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) after the Uruguay Round of Talks was a turning point in the signification of globalization. The activities and role of this organization increased during the 1990s. Hence, many thinkers call the 1990s the decade of globalization.
GATT had 102 members in 1990 while the numbers of the WTO exceeded 134 in 1999[xv] and consequently the trade of goods and services increased quickly.
C) Intellectual-political background – The disintegration of Soviet Union, the decline of communism, and introduction of liberal democracy as the dominant ideology of the world prepared a suitable ground for globalization. With the decline of communism - the rival model of capitalism - liberal democracy came to the fore as the only model that claims to be able to fulfill all demands of man and tries to expand its domain across the globe.
The claim of liberal democracy of being globalized is based on objective as well as subjective foundations:
1) The Subjective or theoretical foundation: The reliance of liberalism on modern rationality and its triumph over the intellectual rivals during the past two-three centuries has spread the idea that liberal democracy is the only model that through reliance on modern rationality can dominate the world. This idea has not only dominated the ideas and thoughts of the peoples of the world but also the ideas or thoughts of researchers and thinkers in various parts of the world (even the Third World) who have confirmed it.[xvi]
2) Objective foundation: Some palpable moves in the world are underway towards free economy and integration in the international capital market. The WTO, the acceleration of democratic movements and expansion of Western models in various societies,[xvii] and overall the international intellectual-political backgrounds during the past one, two decades have prepared the grounds for the spread of the idea of globalization.
Perhaps one of the main backgrounds for the signification of globalization is man's need to offer models and follow models in the world and bridge cultural gaps and lacunas, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Communism) that has pushed globalization towards an irreversible stage.
3) Major problems of the global society: The major universal general problems and threats the global society has been entangled with during the past decades and which gradually are growing and expanding, including global warming, destruction of the Ozone Layer, the threat of the spread of Mass Destruction Weapons (MDW), etc. have obligated all the societies to face these menaces unitedly. Hence international measures are necessary to face these problems. Evidently in a globalized world these global measures will be more effective and coordinated in facing these threats.
During the past few decades all conditions have been ripe for condensation of the world in time and space and widespread connection of the societies to shrink the world. Information technology has played a crucial role in condensation of the world.
In a globalized world, people in far away parts of the world can easily contact each other particularly through information technology such as computer and Internet to garner information about various affairs. The essence of the modern world is enhancement of people's information. Overall, the enhancement of information and awareness plays an important role in the progress and development of every society. Of course in some countries (mainly with undemocratic political systems) it will create several problems for their governments and their legitimacy. The effects of globalization will be discussed below.
4 –Approaches to Globalization
In the field of consequences and implications of globalization, like its conceptual background and history, there are a number of intellectual currents and circles, which encompass positive and negative aspects of globalization.
The advocates of globalization through their arguments try to demonstrate the positive aspects of globalization. They consider globalization a completely positive and useful trend while the opponents consider it dangerous and negative. Whether globalization is a threat or an opportunity will be discussed below.
4 – 1 – Globalization as an Opportunity
This approach encompasses various viewpoints including the neo-liberalist, neo-functionalist etc. The neo-liberalist approach considers globalization the liberation of various fields in the interdependent world which expands the communications and exchanges of human societies. The neo-functionalists consider the era of globalization that of enhancement of regional interactions which in turn prepare the grounds for upgrading international cooperation and convergence, a step towards globalization.
The advocates consider the globalization in the said manner as a utopia due to which convergence, economic advantages, liberation from undemocratic systems, and establishment of international civil society and democracy will be materialized.[xviii]
The advocates of globalization basically consider this process as an inevitable, useful key to the future growth of the global economy.[xix]
In sum the ideas of the advocates may be summarized in the following three points: a) Economic-commercial field: Expansion of free trade across the globe (since the 1980s with the Reagan and Tacher's liberalization policies and collapse of communism),[xx] more interdependence of the world economies compared to the past and ever expansion of financial and commercial deals,[xxi] expansion of technology beyond the limit of the developed countries, considerable growth of transportation, communication and tourism (it has had 12 percent growth in the last decade and the global income accruing from it touched the figure 400 billion dollars – more than the figure for the world's oil exports).[xxii]
The advocates of globalization consider the outcomes of this process positive and constructive and in the interest of the entire mankind. Of course, there will be some short-term and long-term problems in this way, but the final outcome will be bright and positive.
B) Cultural – Today more than ever there exists a global culture; to the extent that most of the urban areas in the world seem similar. The world enjoys a common culture most of which stem from Hollywood. The world is becoming more and more homogenous and the differences are vanishing away.[xxiii] The enhancement of global awareness, international interdependence due to international contacts,[xxiv] expansion of a cosmopolitan culture, etc. are all the outcomes of globalization. Human beings think globally and act locally and this is why the world is moving towards peace and stability.
C) Political – An international civil society with transnational social and political movements is taking shape and the allegiance of individuals to the governments is being transferred to subsidiary governmental, transnational and international institutions.[xxv] In fact, the role of governments is paling away everyday. In the process of globalization, most pressures are exerted on the undemocratic, rigid governments[xxvi] and such governments will be weakened and will perish away due to globalization. Globalization facilities international measures and coordination to face off international threats (AIDS, environmental pollution, terrorism, etc.), for the governments are not able to thwarts such threats individually.[xxvii] In effect the international measures will be more useful in a globalized world due to coordination among the international players.
In sum, the advocates of globalization maintain that the world is moving towards peace and tranquility, for the globalization movement is a move towards convergence.
In the end of this part, it is pertinent to allude to some of the consequences of globalization as mentioned by thinkers and scholars.
1 – Expansion of communication, reduction of time and spatial distances and removal of hurdles in the way of free flow of information.
2 – Enhancement of collective consciousness towards common fate of mankind.
3 – Feeling of belongingness of human beings to the great family of nations and international society will be more comprehensive than the national communities.
4 – More inclination of authoritarian governments towards democracy.
5 – Closeness and more coordination between international players.
6 – Possibility of exchange of views and mutual understanding among cultures.
7 – Expansion of man's choice from national to international level.
8 – Preparation of media opportunities for the spread of Islam and imparting its message to the truth-seekers across the world in case the time and information technology are used properly as well as preparation of the grounds for the constant contact of the Muslim immigrants with the base country in order to preserve their religious values and identity.
9 – By certain observations and preservations, the international information network has provided a unique opportunity for the scientific progress of the developing and Islamic countries on the one hand and for identifying the interested people in Islamic thought and ideas and its proper introduction to them on the other.
4 -2- The Approach Focusing on Threats (Opponents)
This approach contains such approaches as neo-Marxism and neo-realism. The first through a center-periphery attitude considers globalization a factor for the enhancement of the power and wealth of the metropolitan countries and marginalization and gradual death of the weak countries. The second approach is power-based in which a few great powers at the cost of the destruction, bankruptcy, disintegration and dismemberment of national sovereignty of most of the countries concentrates on the consolidation, demonstration and exertion of power in the post-Westphalian system.
According to a verse: "might is right, if you want to have peace, you have to become strong."
The opponents of globalization consider it a hostile act and even horrible and maintain that globalization will exacerbate inequality among nations, threatens employment and standards of life and prevents social progress.[xxviii]
Overall, in viewpoint of the opponents, globalization is a project and a major social-political engineering in the world which will lead to the impoverishment of the poor and enrichment of the rich.[xxix]
The opponents of globalization forward the following arguments to support their viewpoints:
A) Economic-commercial – In reply to the argument of the advocates of globalization in the field of commerce and economy, the opponents maintain that although the spread of free market economy across the world is superficially correct, the global economy is in effect the economy of a limited number of rich countries in the world and in a more precise assessment the global economy belongs to the countries that are the members of OECD.[xxx]
The technologies accompanying globalization function in the interest of rich economies of the world and prefer their interests to that of the developing countries. Therefore, globalization not only has an imperialistic nature but exploitative one as well. Overall, globalization has unequal effects and its advantages will go only to small section of the human society (the Western developed world).[xxxi] Under the circumstances, global convergence too will be distributed in a very unequal manner in the world (for instance, in the international purchase market in 1998, the total transaction of the world was about 24 trillion (US) dollars, major chunk of which was spent by 20 percent of the world's population.[xxxii] The main reason for the opposition of the opponents of globalization is their fear of the widening of hiatus between the countries of the North and South.
B) Cultural – The opponents have various answers to the argument of the advocates who maintain that globalization will remove the cultural differences and create a single, common culture. First of all, most of the opponents maintain that such a common culture will never be created, for globalization has two meanings: first convergence and second pluralism. Globalization fosters both the social movements that struggle for respect to human rights and social movements that continue racism and ethnic schism or the fundamentalist ones. Although a kind of social integration of the CNN type is created, in fact, globalization is mainly a collection of local villages rather than a single global village.[xxxiii] Secondly, the danger of decline of indigenous cultures and cultural diversity in the world has worried a number of societies. Hence, they strongly oppose and resist such a prospect.
Many discussions in this regard aim to rescue the cultural diversity of human society and distinct cultural identities from the threat of this global whirlpool.[xxxiv] The preservation of cultural heritage of regions and areas is the concern of many human beings and this fear has pushed them towards protesting against this process and resisting this process in line with preservation of their local-indigenous cultures.
C) Political – The opponents of globalizations have their arguments regarding the effect of this process on the governments. Although the role of governments has undergone a change in the process of globalization, it does not mean that the governments will vanish away. The governments will continue to play a role in the international arena and indeed their function will undergo a change. Also the main concern is that the newly-emerging strong transnational players are not accountable in this globalized world.[xxxv] Hence, if globalization means disintegration or dilution of the role of governments, the lack of an alternative to this ever-strong player will pose more dangers to the world. Also all globalizing forces are not good forces. Criminalization facilitates the measures of drug cartels, those of the international terrorists and the offence unions. In fact, the facilitation and expansion of communication technologies have prepared a suitable ground for the activities of terrorist groups.[xxxvi]
The opponents criticize the statement of the advocates who maintain that the world is moving towards peace and tranquility, because the globalization movement moves towards convergence. They maintain that the forces that push this process ahead may lead to divergence as much.
The opponents surprise as to why the advocates ignore the fact that the world has faced disintegration in many grounds. The opponents refer to the widening gap and heterogeneity between the North and South and between various social groups in many countries.[xxxvii]
The hiatus between the undeveloped and Northern countries and between the poor and rich countries is worrisome. Thabo Embeki the President of South Africa, at the Davoos Summit in Switzerland, stated: when there is talk of globalization, what we see is a world which is divided into two sections is: on the one hand we see the rich and the powerful and on the other the weak and poor.[xxxviii]
Will peace and tranquility be meaningful in such a world?
The wave of protests against globalization is still expanding. In Seattle, Davoos, etc., some violent protests have taken place. The diversity of the incentive of the protestors and demonstrators against globalization has encouraged some thinkers to call these protests multigenerational or multi-class or multi-problem.
Among the protestors and demonstrators participating in the anti-globalization rallies, there are people from various groups such as the advocates of the workers' interests (labor unions), environmentalists, advocates of human rights, supporters of animal rights, peasants, etc.[xxxix]
In fact, the oppositions and protests are not confined to the undeveloped countries, but on the contrary the protests are more vigorous in the developed countries.
Commenting on the protests, Noam Chamsky states: right now protests against it [globalization] have spread in the rich countries. They have organized huge demonstrations in Seattle, Washington and London. In other words, the villagers started roaring and the king has become conscious.[xl]
Despite the protests and demonstrations, globalization is not a completely destructive or negative process rather it has a number of positive and constructive effects as well. In other words, globalization offers both opportunities and threats; both positive and negative effects – it is a double-edge sword.
What follows is some of the negative consequences of the globalization which have been put forth by various thinkers.
1 – Creation of gap in the local identities and creation of crisis of identity.
2 – Disintegration of the countries' sovereignty and undermining their political identity.
3 – Balkanization of the countries and intensification of ethnic crises and separationist movements.
4 – Weakening of the national cultures by cultural invasion and creation of ethical crises.
5 – Destruction of the environment.
6 – Imposition of cultural monologue and elimination of all cultures and domination of a single culture – which enjoys more instruments and facilities – over other cultures and marginalization of weak nations due to cultural integration.
7 – Imposition of values and strategies of the power-wielders.
8 – Threatening the international peace and stability due to expansionist stances of the big powers.
9 – Widening of the gap between the rich and the poor on national level and widening of the hiatus between the developed and undeveloped countries on international level.
10 – Globalization of organized crimes.
11 – Shaking the cultural, spiritual, social and economic foundations of societies.
4 -3 – Differential, Eclectic Approach
The literature of globalization bewilders in between the struggle between the experimental and ideological approaches. We have not yet witnessed an effective measure in the field of production of an indigenous theory for the elaboration of this significant, fundamental and sensitive issue. On the one hand, some thinkers mainly on the basis of modern values elaborate the functional, objective aspects of globalization, considering it a natural historical process; on the other, a group emphasizing and highlighting the ideological elements, without paying attention to its natural process consider it an imposed, clandestine and planned project by the great powers. While some sort of organic and logical relations can be considered between these two approaches, they should be also taken into account together. 41 [ In other words, there should be some combination between the positive and negative (opportunities and threats) approaches.
The differential-eclectic approach considers both positive and negative consequences for globalization (opportunities and threats) on the one hand and on the other hand calls for differentiation of various arenas and aspects of this phenomenon and an appropriate decision concomitant with each aspect. This approach contains the important and positive aspects of other approaches. Hence, it may be also called humanitarian approach to globalization, looking at this phenomenon like other phenomena as a tool in the service of man. This approach is based on faith, justice and spirituality, and meets the demands of contemporary man to offer the man of the age of internet and satellite just like the man of any other era. Particularly today's man who, despite progress in various fields, is inflicted with crisis of identity, vacuum of spirituality, discrimination and bewilderment. This is the approach based on the monotheistic worldview and anthropology of the seal of religions.
Emphasizing on the third approach, the author maintains that neither the integration or isolation approaches to globalization nor surrender to it will be useful nor rigid resistance or inflexibility nor rejection will be helpful. Rather, the model of management of change and development can be an appropriate model or at least should be studied in confronting this phenomenon to consolidate power of choice and selection. Moreover, while utilizing its positive aspects and advantages it will prepare the grounds for avoiding its negative consequences or reducing their negative consequences. In this regard allusion is made to some of the solutions for reducing the negative aspects of globalization for the developing countries, particularly the Islamic ones.
5 – Strategies to Confront Negative Aspects of Globalization
The solutions to reduce the negative aspects of globalization and reduction of its threats and challenges may be studied at three levels: A) scientific and cultural elite; B) National governments and units and government officials and politicians; C) the developing world, particularly the great family of Islamic world and regional and interregional conferences and organization.
Some of the strategies are mentioned below without specifying the said levels.
1 – Cautious approach to the issue of globalization due to its ambiguity and complexity. It is also necessary to achieve a theoretical consensus and practical coordination to attain a common understanding of this phenomenon at various aspects, particularly at the level of the elite and thinkers of the Islamic world and even a wider level of the developing world. Also it is necessary to increase the individual and collective capabilities of the Islamic countries and prepare the grounds for their active participation in the international arena in order to reduce the threats of globalization.
2 – Production of new ideas on the basis of religious teachings in order to take the theoretical initiative through offering up-to-date, attractive, practical and effective theories to meet the demands and prepare the grounds for theoretical self-reliance and refraining from imitation of Western theories in the field of globalization and other fields.
3 – Besides the above measures, attempts should be made to offer a practical, successful, and effective model of religious government to the world. It is necessary in this regard to consolidate the theoretical foundations of religious democracy and theorization in order to make it more effective. In this regard the management of change and development through reliance on the principle of continuation for change, abidance by religious principles, preservation of clear and unambiguous principles and consideration of the elements of time and space, some comprehensive, indigenous, coordinated, sustainable, long-term, institutionalized, planned, controlled, organized, constructive, and moderate reforms should be carried out.
4 – It is necessary to restudy the realities of the contemporary world, particularly the attractive claims of the West in the field of democracy, human rights, right to self-determination for nations, campaign against violence, terrorism, etc. Nevertheless the recent developments at the regional and international levels to a great extent have shed light on the intentions of the claimants and illuminated the real face of the utopia depicted by the liberal democracy.
Oppression and discrimination, numerous limitations imposed on the way of the choice of the nations in international level, instrumentalization of international institutions and law, racism, suppression of the weak, imposition of political and cultural monologue, while claiming to advocate a pluralism, are some of realities that the developing countries, particularly the citizens of the Western societies and the Muslims, have become aware of.
5 – More attention should be paid to the software aspects of power in the light of technological developments and information revolution or explosion and utilization of culture as a tool for international status in interaction with the governments and non-governmental organizations.
In this field, it is necessary to plan for a coordinated media system for the Islamic world on the basis of cultural communalities and common identity as well as through joint ventures to utilize modern technology.
6 – Attention should be paid to the regional groupings that play a dynamic, constructive role for regional convergence, assigning an intermediary role to the regional organizations between the national and international levels, and division of the imposed load on national units in the form of coordination, cooperation and convergence models.
Making the Organization of Islamic Conference more active as an interregional organization and the conjunction between regional networks to play an effective role in theoretical consensus and joint action by the family of Islamic countries. Of course, this issue first and foremost requires political will of the member-states to create the necessary self-conscience to materialize this wish.
7 – Increasing the power of diplomatic maneuver in international arena for changing the challenges to opportunities and controlling the threats, improving the utilization of the existing opportunities, creating new opportunities, upgrading the power of decision-making, predicting the future through envisaging various scenarios, and offering role models and benchmarking.
In fact it will be wise to increase the pace of action in utilizing the time factor in making policies and taking measures.
8 – Active and effective participation in international organizations in order to influence the public opinion at world level and consolidate the international platforms of the developing countries, particularly those of the Islamic world in these organizations.
9 – Special attention should be paid to the role and status of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in consolidating cooperation among nations and increasing the number of audience.
10 – Regional tensions and conflicts as well as bilateral conflicts and tensions should be reduced and instead attentions should be drawn towards the international challenges and problems the Muslims face.
11 – Attempts should be made to increase the share of the Muslim countries in the international market of cultural goods and products on the side of other aspects of trade.
12 – More attentions should be paid to the institution of family and civil institutions in cultural and social plans. Moreover besides the official, governmental efforts, attempts should be made unofficially to fight the negative effects of globalization on this institution

i. Global Leadership

In order to develop leaders who can effectively lead global operations, it is important to understand what makes leaders effective across cultures. Culture shapes how we think about what is good leadership, and the definitions of an "effective leader" vary from one culture to another. In fact, effective leadership behavior in one culture could (and will) be completely ineffective in others.

Therefore, a one-development-approach will not work when developing global leaders. While true leaders can envision what they want to achieve, know how to meet the challenges of the market and take steps to make that vision a reality, how they interact with people will define their success. Leaders with cultural sensitivity can be more effective than those without. Leadership is complex and leading across cultures is more complex. (For specific information on Global Finance Leadership Developmen

The framework for Global Leadership Development should include:
1. Identification of talent
2. Assessment of the talent capabilities (and this should include cultural assessment for global leaders)
3. A gap analysis (one to identify needs for each individual and a general one regarding the talent pool so the organization can leverage needs across large employee populations)
4. A variety of development approaches that address culturally appropriate learning styles
5. Measurement processes to track actual development


Necessity of global leadership

develops the capabilities of leaders, managers and employees - as individuals, in teams and for organizations working and competing internationally. We provide focused, high quality, innovative and business driven international Human Resources and Organizational Development solutions that are precisely matched to the strategic needs of our clients and the professional development needs of their people.
Alliance members can provide your company with an integrated international network of co-operative companies across the major economic centers of the world. We can serve your company in-country locally or internationally almost anywhere. Through our offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas,
major consulting practice areas include:
1. Global Leadership Development
2. Global Team Development
3. Global Competency Development and Implementation
4. Global Workforce Training and Development
5. Global HRM/OD
6. Outsourced and Startup HR

The nature of global conflict

The US role

Global Leadership-A case study
ITAP International
ITAP International is a full-service consulting firm specializing in building human capability across functional, global and cultural boundaries. ITAP's approach is to deliver highly developed expertise in the cross-cultural aspects of international business as a fully integrated and natural part of global business solutions. We are specialists in doing business internationally - across borders and cultures - through a comprehensive set of international human resources development and organizational development services
ITAP International specializes in global, cross-border consulting. We focus on helping organizations work across internal and national borders, achieving success through people. We are experts working in multiple countries with extensive line and staff experience in multiple sectors. Our work is based on the best research and the best global practices.
Our services focus on:
1. Growth and sustainability
2. Globalization
3. Transformation and change
4. Talent retention and development
5. Effectiveness of the senior team and mission critical teams
ITAP Competency Development

Using ITAP's software, design new or import existing competencies and manage performance.
Global Competency Development Service Summary

Competencies have stood the test of time - and are now the required approach for organizations seeking to integrate their HR practice with the strategic and operational needs of the organization. Since their introduction two decades ago, competency models and competency-based HRM and HRD processes have become the 'best practice' foundation of high-quality business focused HR for thousands of international business and public sector organizations. ITAP offer extensive experience and expertise around the difficult issues of designing competency and leadership models that are appropriate, valid and operational across cultures and geographic borders. Our offering includes a powerful and unique set of competency software tools that support competency model research and development, broad ranging individual competency-based assessment, and individual and job competency profiling. ITAP’s competency services are targeted at the following areas:
• Competency Research and Development
• Creating Job Family Competency Models
• Creating Themed Competency Models
• Competency-based HR
• Recruitment & Selection
• Performance Management
Global Leadership Development
Global Leadership Development Service Summary

ITAP understands what makes leaders effective across cultures, leading global operations. Culture shapes how we think about what is good leadership, and the definitions of an "effective leader" vary from one culture to another. In fact, effective leadership behavior in one culture could (and will) be completely ineffective in others. Therefore, a one-development-approach will not work when developing global leaders. While true leaders can envision what they want to achieve, know how to meet the challenges of the market and take steps to make that vision a reality, how they interact with people will define their success. ITAP’s Global Leadership Development services include:
1. Definition of what qualities and characteristics (competencies) are necessary to succeed across cultures in your organization
2. Audit of the global recruitment, selection and succession policies
3. Identification of talent through a gap analysis across the overall talent pool and a gap analysis for individuals
4. Assessment of the talent capabilities (including cultural assessment for global leaders)
5. A variety of development approaches (training, mentoring, and coaching) that address culturally appropriate learning styles
6. Measurement processes to track actual development
Cross-Cultural Training
Cross-Cultural Training and Development Service Summary

Communications styles and expectations of supervisors and colleagues differ between cultures. ITAP’s approach is always that that individuals within cultures have different values as well and that self-discovery of these values is the starting point for working effectively across culture. Participants experience self-discover via leader-led interpretation of their individualized Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ report. The Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ is a research-based personal assessment tool founded on the seminal work of Dr. Geert Hofstede. ITAP’s development programs are always customized, never off-the-shelf. Common organizational objectives for introducing cross-cultural learning include:
• Allow cultural diversity to positively influence job and team performance.
• Ensure impact and connectivity with multi-cultural participants
• Provide a common vocabulary and framework for dealing with cultural aspects of global organizations (and delivering the training effectively internationally).
• Cascading this cross-cultural literacy across all staff from executive teams, to functional branches such as Finance and Supply Chain, to and to new hires.
Global Team Development
Global Team Development Service Summary

National culture differences play a role in team and team-leader development and management. The behaviors that define an "effective leader" or "effective team player" differ across borders. The usual issues that plague teams, such as how to resolve conflicts, how to communicate more effectively, how to motivate team members, and how to lead teams effectively, all become more complex with multi-cultural and/or virtual teams. Time-zone, language, and cultural differences, as well as pressures to meet local priorities and lack of face-to face contact, can pull global teams in different directions. Acknowledging the impact of these factors will create opportunities for discussion of different perceptions and solutions to problems faced by global teams. Companies that leverage cultural differences well can improve creativity and add value to the outputs of global teams.
Change/Transformation
Global Change/Transformation Service Summary

Too often “transformation” focuses more on systems and processes and not enough on the organizational structure and its people. Companies turn to ITAP to improve the return on investment in transformational change and to improve adoption. ITAP performs gap analyses to determine whether leadership/employee internal values will support organizational culture transformation or be a barrier to it. Measurements can include both current and vision organizational culture, internal values compared to vision (post change), or can compare HQ to divisions or global locations. This information supports change initiatives that engage employees in adopting the change.

In corporate or functional transformations ITAP can, identify areas for concentrated efforts (due to a mismatch of internal values and the change direction), assess team capabilities to support the change, identify behavioral competencies required post-change, assess organizational capability to fill competency gaps. These approaches have reduced adoption time, reduced silo mentalities, and increased capability to affect the purpose of the change.
Global Call Centers
Global Call Center Development Service Summary

Integrating outsourced technical, back office and customer service operations in countries such as China, India, Costa Rica, Canada, South Africa and the Philippines is a challenge for global service organizations. ITAP International offers a comprehensive cross-cultural approach to improving customer service performance. Culture is a competitive variable in the entire customer service cycle, affecting everything from site selection, agent selection, agent development, management, and quality processes. Cultural preferences define customer expectations and these expectations vary greatly from one culture to another. ITAP's tools and solutions for the offshore call centers are intended to address cross-cultural differences that, if not expressly handled, negatively impact agent performance, management performance, and customer experience. ITAP's call center services are led by and based on the work of Erik Granered author of Global Call Centers: Achieving Outstanding Customer Service Across Borders and Time Zones (Nicholas Brealey, 2005
ITAP International Capabilities

ITAP focuses on organizational strategy; we look for future needs as well as those
helping our clients deal with today. We integrate customer, market and competitor
intelligence into human resources solutions. We work with the realities of operating
structures we find and utilize operating networks; we identify and leverage
operating cultures.
ITAP concentrates on making the link between real issues and practical solutions.
We work with clients to find the pressure points and help articulate the consequences
of the status quo. We work with clients to identify options and find the best solutions –
for this business, in this market, with these customers, with this strategy.
ITAP develops and aligns HR strategy, structure and policies to provide differentiated
value to the organization, in support of local, regional and global objectives.
ITAP engages client partners in actions that enhance the client company's ability
to work towards and achieve its mission. ITAP helps organizations build their knowledge,
capability and effectiveness through:
1. Identification, selection, development and retention of leaders and critical
talent, and assuring they are ready for succession.
2. Promotion of sound leadership, management and/or operations of an organization
3. Development of teams/team leaders and individual contributors
4. Enhancement of coordination across functions, divisions, countries or other borders
5. Fostering effective communications and
6. Management of change focusing on organizational systems and structures as well
as the needs of employees
ITAP and its Alliance network:
• Have a level of knowledge and expertise that makes a difference to the client
• Learn from their clients and from their peers in the ITAP Alliance network in
• order to best serve clients
• Access capabilities in the Alliance network to find the right consultant or trainer
• when they can not appropriately meet the needs of the client
• Proactively ask questions. Look for new ways of understanding client problems.
• Find creative and appropriate opportunities to serve the client's business needs.
Global Finance Leadership Development - Transforming the Culture of Finance

CFO's invest in their staff's global leadership capabilities to leverage the benefits of existing investments in process and system transformations. Investments in processes and systems do not deliver on their potential without leaders with a strategic perspective, business savvy, and partnership skills. CFO's invest in global leadership to avoid the following problems:
• Responsibilities remain transactional, rather than strategic
• Leaders lack a global perspective, and do not work effectively across markets and business cultures.
• Analysis is restricted to historical data, and fails to address future opportunities
• Interaction with the other lines of business creates unproductive conflict and competition
• Process and system transformations have not yielded the intended results
While there are no quick fixes or cookbook strategies to develop global leadership within the finance function, ITAP can help expand finance's global leadership capabilities by adapting proven tools and methods to fit each unique organization. Depending on the client's needs, ITAP's level of involvement varies from consulting, to providing proprietary tools, to implementation. ITAP reviews with the client the state of their business, the extent to which finance has transformed its processes and systems, and the resources and capabilities that are available internally for leadership development.
There are various circumstances under which CFO's turn to ITAP to develop their staff's leadership capabilities:
The Business is: The process and system transformations: Internal Leadership Development Capabilities:
Expanding, and finance needs to take on more responsibilities in order to serve the business
OR
Contracting, and finance and perhaps other functions have been downsized. Finance has fewer resources, yet many of its services remain essential to the business.
OR
Merging with another business and the finance function is expected to integrate. Require further refinement before the starting the implementation phase
OR
Meet expectations, and the implementation work is underway
OR
Need more input from the leadership to overcome obstacles
OR
Compel finance leaders to develop new capabilities necessary to leverage the upgraded processes and systems. A competency model is in place, but it needs to be assessed for culture bias, and aligned with the global reach of finance leaders.
OR
There are not enough internal resources to use the existing model to:
1. Assess finance leadership potential
2. Hire and promote finance leaders
3. Manage performance and learning
OR
There is no competency model in place
The outcome of ITAP's involvement is a finance team that supports the CFO's efforts to integrate the business. The organization successfully meets the challenge of fragmented management practices, drawing planning and measurement systems together to achieve savings across the lines of business. Customized to the unique circumstances of each client, ITAP designs solutions that enable global finance leaders to:
• Understand the difference between local approaches and corporate ones
• Help the local organization understand and comply with what is in the best interests of the organization (e.g. asset management, esp. cash)
• Support the local business leader in making sound, fact-based decisions and in anticipating their need for information to make decisions
• Provide a balanced perspective on what is possible as well as the potential outcomes of certain decisions (e.g. understanding price point from both a marketing and a finance perspective)
• Provide a local, regional and global perspective on local decision options (e.g. tax, and foreign exchange implications)
Here are two examples of recent ITAP projects:
Case #1 - A Global Financial Institution
A global financial institution approached ITAP for support in a Global Financial Transformation Project. ITAP was tasked with identifying the behavioral competencies required to be an effective financial business partner while retaining the best practice of financial risk management, for which this organization is well-known. ITAP focused on the strategic intent of the organization and, using proven research techniques, uncovered/defined the behaviors necessary to the financial work of today and of the future. Using the defined competency model, the client:
• Performed a gap analysis to identify organizational needs
• Assessed/identified which employees had the capabilities and how much they had
• Used that to data to develop or select those who would succeed and stay
In this case, the competency model included multiple levels of the finance function starting at the CFO level and down to offshore financial call center and internal support positions.
Case #2 - A Global Consumer Products Company
A global consumer products company tasked ITAP with defining how to develop financial talent following an organizational restructuring that reduced silos and installed a matrixed management structure. The scope was to build a finance curriculum around existing development processes focusing on both talent and the rest of the global finance function (5,000 people worldwide). ITAP designed a 5-day offsite that included deeply challenging sessions on topics such as pricing, product costing, margin management, inventory control, tax/treasury and other topics specific to this business. ITAP partnered with finance and other business functions (marketing, supply chain, operations) to build company-specific cases which required demonstration of business partnering skills. As business partnering was a central theme of the program, ITAP leveraged its Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ to bring a truly global perspective to the meaning of partnership in this organization.
ITAP also wrote Instructor Guides, Participant Guides and collected support materials so that the talent development program would be repeatable.
In addition, ITAP created a virtual training portal for webinar-style training. This capability allows the organization to trickle-down important functional learning lessons in a cost effective way throughout finance and beyond.
Auditing and Functional Excellence
Some CFO’s seek to complement an investment in leadership with workshops on professional conduct. ITAP’s offers workshops that are approved by the State Board for Public Accountancy of New York State. Accountants who successfully complete a workshop receive Continuing Professional Education credits in Auditing, following ITAP Americas’ New York Sponsor License # 002245. The workshops have been approved:
Business Ethics Across Cultures
Participants learn to navigate in a business world in which a best practice in one culture is unethical in another. They learn to uphold their ethical standards by creatively addressing the underlying needs and expectations of their business partners. (1 CPE credit)
Ethical Conduct and Clients
Participants learn to anticipate and manage barriers to compliance in their relationship with internal and external clients. They practice awareness and communication skills that are effective in removing social barriers to compliance. They apply their learning to strengthen their own and their clients' commitment to ethical conduct. (1 CPE credit)
Ethics and Cultural Diversity
Workplace culture can have both a negative and a positive impact on ethical conduct. Participants learn to draw on shared cultural values to manage cultural barriers to compliance, and strengthen their own and their colleagues' commitment to ethical conduct. (1 CPE credit)
Ethical Conduct at the Workplace:
Participants learn to identify and manage barriers to compliance and practice awareness and communication skills that are associated with ethical conduct. They apply their learning to strengthen their own and their colleagues' commitment to ethical conduct. (2 CPE credits)
Our Approach
ITAP International helps companies build global capacity. We focus on building effective partnerships with clients, contributing through the roles that are most appropriate and effective for the successful delivery of the project.

We focus on organizational strategy. We look forward to identify future needs as well as helping our clients deal with the urgent and the current. We integrate external understanding - such as customer, market, economic and competitor intelligence - into the design and delivery of culturally appropriate business solutions. We work with the realities of our client's operating structures.

ITAP concentrates on making the link between real issues and practical solutions. We help clients to find the pressure points and to understand the consequences of the status quo. We work with clients to identify options and find the best solutions - for their business, in their markets, with their customers, with their strategy.
What Makes ITAP Unique
The two things that make ITAP unique as a consulting firm are our breadth and depth.
1. ITAP International and its Alliance members provide your company with an integrated international network of Affiliate and Associate companies across the major economic centers of the world. Our offerings are wide ranging in both geography and function.
2. Our company and network includes only seasoned professionals with diverse international experience and a wide variety of capabilities.
We Believe in Partnering
We are partners and will work within the constraints of your organization, offering full-service consulting or behind the scenes support. Our experience includes partnering with both clients and our affiliates across a wide geographic network. Our projects have a wide range - from complete redesign of US call center training used by outsourcing vendors (to make it appropriate for Indian audiences) - to board development of a biotech company that has grown through acquisition. (Seeexample project list.)
We Recommend Taking a Whole Systems Approach
If you come to us with a problem/challenge, ITAP will work to help you see the benefit of analyzing the whole systems and their impact rather than taking a tactical approach and hoping that it is enough of a solution.
ITAP prefers to conduct needs assessments to identify systemic impact on issues. To conduct the analysis ITAP uses appropriate data collection techniques which could include informal discussions, targeted interviews, electronic surveys, use of assessment instruments and/or other means of data collection. We specialize in uncovering areas within systems where culture plays a hidden role.
Example:
A leadership development program for leaders of remote and global teams was not having the desired effect of improving performance. A systemic analysis found that the process of setting goals, giving feedback and assessing employees was very individualistic (representing the home culture's cultural preference). Some minor modifications to the process (such as focusing more on outcomes than on the process), training on how to communicate about performance expectations in high power distance cultures and use of competency models with leveled behaviors in cultures with a preference for Certainty, were all recommended to globalize the performance process.
We Transfer Knowledge
ITAP understands the necessity of transferring capability to internal service providers. Rather than make your company dependent on consulting services, ITAP works alongside, certifies and otherwise prepares your internal professionals to continue the work we start together.
ITAP International Alliance Affiliates
Affiliate companies are those companies and individuals who seek to access ITAP Alliance Network benefits and who make a formal commitment to the obligations of Alliance membership. Through legal agreement, Affiliates are closely aligned with ITAP International and often are the lead partner for a given geography / country.

Affiliate responsibilities include co-branding with ITAP and proactively marketing and developing client relationships. Affiliate consultants are trained to deliver the Intellectual Property (IP) of ITAP International, and are expected to bring clients to the network.

ITAP Alliance Affiliates meet strict quality standards and deep service capability criteria and provide quality services in the cross-cultural and human resources fields in their home countries. They also support projects globally as their expertise allows and they may be allowed to bring Intellectual Property to ITAP and other Alliance Affiliate and Associate companies.

This growing network provides broad client coverage in many parts of the world. Please let us know if you would like further information about ITAP International Alliance Affiliates or contact these firms directly.
ITAP Affiliate Companies include (in alphabetical order by country):
ITAP Argentina

Delta Management Consulting is a consulting firm specializing in Human Resources Strategic Planning, Organizational Development and Leadership. Founded in 1995, its team has been working on change and organizational development processes, mergers and acquisitions, and privatizations throughout Latin America.
Competency Model Development, the Development Centers -for managerial competencies-, Executive Coaching, and the Delta Leadership Clinic -for senior managers- are among Delta's major products.
Located in Buenos Aires, with operating bases in São Paulo and Quito -through strategic alliances- Delta provides highly complex HRD services. Its client portfolio is focused among the major international companies with branches in Argentina and other countries in the Southern Cone. The working languages are Spanish, English and Portuguese.

ITAP China

Shi Bisset & Associates have over 25 years of Organisational Development, Performance Management and Executive Coaching experience in Asia, the Middle East and Europe (15 years in China). They offer exceptional sensitivity to cross-cultural and organisational change issues and provide a truly custom-made solution to management issues in Chinese, Japanese, English, French and Italian. Shi Bisset is a certified Lominger associate. She has worked with and been referred by BASF Japan Ltd and Virgin Atlantic Airways (regionally). She has, in addition, developed several executive management assessment instruments and implemented related development coaching and programmes at senior and middle management levels for over 50 companies in Asia and Europe.

ITAP Denmark

Human House specializes in management and organizational development and cross-cultural training. Their approaches include coaching of managers and management teams in internationalization processes: cultural analyses and evaluations, cross-cultural teambuilding, post-merger adaptation of corporate cultures, expatriate training and integration, diversity programs, conflict resolution processes, integration of refugees and immigrants.
Human House has extensive experience from the Public sector, including the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from large global companies such as IBM and Novo Nordisk. Based in Denmark, Human House is active all over Scandinavia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, and Latin America. Working languages are Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, English, Spanish and Polish.

ITAP East Africa

Organisational Development Consultants Limited (ODCL), based in Nairobi, Kenya, enables individuals, groups, and organizations to be more capable of driving and managing change and becoming more effective. It enables them to identify what change needs to happen, how it will be implemented, and who leads and controls it.
ODCL is a competence centre focusing on intercultural training, teambuilding and leadership development including governance, CSR and related areas with a physical platform in Nairobi. The programmes are run by consultants and facilitators who combined have many years experience in all sectors of the economy spanning public and private sector, civil society and the NGO world.
ODCL is the result of a partnership between two organizations, Human House A/S of Denmark, and Twalib Ebrahim Hazara & Associates (TEH Associates) of Kenya. TEH Associates operates in Kenya and across Africa.

ITAP France

KD Conseil, located in Paris, France, provides clients with a wide range of intercultural expertise and experience through their global network of international, multilingual trainers, consultants and coaches. Their areas of expertise include Cross Cultural Skills Development, Management Training, Multicultural Team Building and Executive Coaching.

ITAP Germany

TWIST Consulting Group - specializes in National and International Staff Development. They are an international and cross-culturally competent team of Senior-Consultants and Consultants located in Munich, Germany. Their clients are German as well as international companies - their target groups are their professionals and managers. They conduct psychologically based trainings, organization and team development exercises and coaching as well as Assessment- and Development Centers in German, English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and French, nationally and internationally.

ITAP India

TASMAC Management Training Resources (TMTR) - specializes in HR training and consulting. They help organizations perform more effectively by optimizing their people potential. In addition to a large client base in India, they now partner with their international associates to deliver training and consulting to their Fortune 500 clientele in India. TMTR is comitted to working with its clients to build high performing teams, professional leadership and strategic processes using seasoned, experienced professionals and the finest organisational diagnostic tools available. As a solutions provider in the business of motivating and mentoring high-growth individuals, teams and companies to maximise their performance, TMTR has worked with top Indian corporate houses.
ITAP South Africa

Siyeluleka and their associates have extensive experience in the field of individual and organisational research and assessment, organisational development and transformation, training and facilitation, strategic planning, teambuilding, coaching and mentorship, and project management both in the private and public sectors.
Interventions are based on the results of individual and organisational assessment and research rather than on generalised approaches. Siyeluleka is committed to the growth of individuals and organisations and gives attention to developing potential and sharing knowledge

ITAP South Korea

ITAP Asia Pacific is located in Seoul, South Korea and headed by a management team with significant business experience in both Belgium and Korea. Their working languages are English, French and Korean. They have extensive experience in multi-office international operations and cross-cultural consulting. Saehi Han, President of ITAP Asia-Pacific, is the Practice Director for ITAP's Outsourced and Start-Up HR practice.
ITAP's unique software, e-StrategyMapper, developed in Korea, assists clients in creating a strategy map for their business or division. This software also help manage the strategy implementation/action plans through the use of a Balanced Scorecard approach. In addition, ITAP Asia-Pacific offers clients a Change Management Tracking System to help identify whether cultural impediments to change are strong or weak. This information help companies know where specific cultural emphasis is needed to succeed in their change efforts.

ITAP Spain

Schubert Consulting S.L. (SCSL) is a Spanish company based in Barcelona and working throughout Spain. It comprises a team of experienced consultants and coaches specialized in the development of individuals and organizations in transition.
Its main expertise lies in organizational and intercultural consulting. Their services span many of the most important aspects of organizational consulting with emphasis on cross cultural issues within companies and multi-cultural teams, expatriate integration and management development.
They support companies in their search for improved methods to lead their human resources in an environment of continuous change and throughout all phases of transition. In these activities SCSL see themselves involved in the human element of organizational change and in performing key roles as cross-cultural facilitators working with teams as well as individuals.
SCSL has co-operated with ITAP Europe and ITAP International on projects both within Spain and other countries of the EU. Their working languages are English, Spanish, French and German
ITAP UK

Based in the UK, Kimball Consulting Ltd (KCL)’s consultants offer extensive experience, highly-developed expertise, and broad-based competence in the art of providing effective, value-added and cost-effective consultancy across the range on international HRM, HRD and OD issues. KCL’s consultants support each other to ensure powerful and effective support for clients, in the belief that KCL’s clients deserve the best.
KCL believes that there is little in today's business world that exists in glorious isolation, particularly when dealing with people and the dynamic markets in which they operate. That is why KCL looks at HR issues as integral to the business, in direct relation to the customer, and as a set of integrated mechanisms, processes, products and ideas that need to be appreciated as a functioning whole.
USA - MDB Group Inc.

As the originator of the Business-Aligned® diversity and inclusion strategy, MDB Group, Inc. helps its clients improve profitability, attain key business results, and manage reputation through diversity, inclusion, and intercultural competence.
The firm applies practical, proven diversity and inclusion planning models and technologies to build the workforce and workplace that will deliver the business results its clients need.
Its principals have personally led major corporate diversity initiatives, coached executives, held P&L responsibility, and done product development and R&D. They are expert at aligning diversity and inclusion initiatives with business priorities. They also know how to manage expectations and measure results.
Located in the United States, MDB Group's client base includes Fortune 100, Fortune 500, and small to mid-size companies as well as not-for-profit organizations in many different industries, including: technology, consumer products, financial services, insurance, energy, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, food service, and education.
Collaboration in a Virtual Team Environment: A Case Study in Planning the ASTD/AHRD 2001 Future Search Conference

Authors: Gary L. May, Teresa J. Carter and Jennifer D. Dewey
Abstract: This case study explores the learning outcomes for the virtual team that planned the 2001 Future Search Conference for ASTD and AHRD. Team members completed the Global Process Team Questionnaire (GTPQ) and participated in interviews to determine effectiveness factors in team design, individual inputs, and process criteria. Results indicate that pre-existing relationships established trust in the virtual environment and supported the workload according to individual talents and interests. Motivated by intrinsic rewards of publishing, learning, and colleagueship, team members invested considerable personal time in the project. Highly effective leadership distributed among the geographically dispersed team members provided organizing techniques, including pre-sent teleconference agendas, summarizing documents, and extensive E-mail exchanges. Implications for HRD include the desirability of volunteer membership, the necessity of strong and distributed team leadership, and the effectiveness of organizing strategies for successful virtual collaboration via E-mail and teleconference.

Keywords: Virtual Team Environment, Collaborative Learning, Future Search Conference
Research Methodology: Case Study

This case study explores collaboration in a virtual team environment for the nine members who planned and organized the 2001 Future Search Conference that was sponsored by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) and the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) in Orlando, Florida. A Future Search Conference is a large group strategic planning process that brings together key stakeholders in an attempt to get the "whole system" in the room to envision a desired future for a task of vital importance to an organization or community (Weisbord, 1992; Weisbord & Janoff, 2000).

In February 2001, the ASTD Research-to-Practice Committee, composed of a mix of practitioners, consultants, and academics, met to develop a conceptual outline for a Future Search conference to inform the HRD profession of the future of workplace learning and performance. The execution of the project was assigned to a team of volunteer ASTD members, dubbed the Future Search Steering Group (FSSG). This team, with the assistance of a Future Search facilitator, had four months to put together the conference without benefit of a face-to-face meeting. The conference was successful and currently serves as the foundation for continuing work within ASTD and AHRD. This case study describes the experiences of the FSSG team and provides useful lessons on collaboration in a virtual environment.
Problem Statement
Very little formal research has explored the effectiveness of virtual teams (Furst, Blackburn, & Rosen, 1999), even though trends towards globalization and enhancements in communication technology have made virtual teaming an integral part of most small group work (Katzenbach & Smith, 2001). Different time, space, and culture factors add to the complexity of collaboration in a virtual environment (Duarte & Snyder, 2001; Fisher & Fisher, 2001). In addition to these factors, the Future Search planning team was composed primarily of volunteers, an aspect of team participation that has received little or no attention in the research literature.
Theoretical Framework
There have been a number of theoretical frames applied to explain the functioning and effectiveness of teams, including developmental stages (Tuckman, 1965), punctuated equilibrium (Gersick, 1988),social exchange theory (Hollender, 1978), and process structuration theory (Giddens, 1984). One theoretical model, the Team Effectiveness Leadership Model or TELM (Ginnett, 1996; Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 1999), has been developed specifically to examine the variables impacting team effectiveness in a business context. Figure 1 provides a diagram adapted from the TELM model.

Based on the work of Richard Hackman (1990) and refined through field research at the Center for Creative Leadership, the TELM model uses a general systems theory approach in the study of teams. In a simplified version of Ginnett's (1996) model, individual, team, and organizational factors identified as inputs to the system are displayed on the left in Figure 1. Process or throughputs (i.e. what one can tell about the team by actually observing the team members at work) occupy the center of the model; and outputs (i.e. how well the team did in accomplishing its objectives) are shown on the right side of the figure.

In this case study, we limit our focus on only those factors in the model that our experience can illuminate: two input factors (team design factors and individual inputs) and team process factors. These three areas are highlighted in bold in Figure 1 to illustrate the focus of our inquiry.

The reasons for this limited focus are twofold: first, the organization inputs for a volunteer team of this nature were minimal: We had no organizationally sponsored control systems, including reward, education, or information systems other than international dialing access for teleconference calls. Five core members of the steering group and the Future Search facilitator who assisted them were geographically dispersed volunteers, including one member located in London; three other steering group members worked directly or indirectly for ASTD in the Washington, D. C. area. The six unpaid volunteers contributed more than two-thirds of the time, effort, and energy that resulted in a successful conference. Team leadership came from within the volunteer membership of the team and was not an organizationally assigned function.

Second, this is an exploration of process, individual, and team design factors that contribute to effectiveness rather than a study of team outcomes (the team "outputs" of the model). We take the effectiveness of the team to be an outcome achieved only in part, since the work of the Future Search conference is still ongoing. Conference attendees have been invited to participate in an extension of the dialogue that was begun in Orlando through online forums, and work is currently being undertaken to use the conference outcomes in the development of a book. Instead, we focus here on factors that contributed to success in planning the Future Search conference in a virtual environment in which E-mail and teleconferences were our primary modes of communication.

One role of case studies is to test theory (Yin, 1994). The purpose of this exploratory study was to compare and contrast the experiences of the Future Search Steering Group to specific aspects of the TELM, using the model as a theoretical guide. Our goal was to draw some prescriptive lessons that can be applied by volunteer groups working in a virtual environment in the future. The study was guided by the following research questions:
• How did the experiences of the Future Search Steering Group fit with the TELM?
• How did team design, individual inputs, and process factors contribute to team effectiveness?
Methodology
Most case studies rely on multiple methods of data collection to ensure validity and reliability (Creswell, 1998). Two types of data were collected from the nine members of the FSSG during two months that followed the conference planning. Telephone interviews, lasting approximately one hour, covered the following: (a) the process of what makes a virtual planning experience successful; (b) individual factors contributing to motivation and commitment to participate in virtual planning; (c) team design factors, including leadership aspects of virtual collaboration; and (d) perceptions of group-level (collective) learning processes. All interviews were conducted by the same researcher, one of the paper's authors. Each team member was asked 13 open-ended questions, followed by probing questions for clarification, when necessary. All conversations were taped and professionally transcribed, resulting in 75 single-spaced pages of data gathered.

The FSSG members also completed ITAP International’s Global Team Process Questionnaire (GTPQ), a diagnostic instrument designed to help teams improve their effectiveness and productivity (Bing, 2001). As with all teams who use the instrument, this version of the GTPQ was customized for use with the FSSG. The instrument consisted of 19 close-ended items assessing such factors as equality of work distribution, clarity of team objectives, group communications, trust, conflict resolution, and leadership. Each item included a section for additional comments. The GTPQ questionnaire has been thoroughly tested for reliability and validity with global teams in the pharmaceutical, consumer products, and information technology fields for more than five years. For purposes of the questionnaire, a global team is one with members located in more than one country or one that has members from more than one country temporarily working in the same location (Bing, 2001). Mean scores were obtained for the GTPQ close-ended items. Transcriptions of the taped telephone interviews and open-ended comments from the GTPQ were analyzed for themes by the paper co-authors.
Results and Findings
Four major themes emerged from the interviews and open-ended comments on the GTPQ within this virtual, geographically dispersed team: (a) the importance of energizing and highly effective leadership; (b) intrinsic rewards that motivated individuals; (c) the necessity of a trustful environment, and (d) specific "enabling" virtual communication techniques and protocols. These will be described and related to three aspects of the TELM: team design, individual input factors, and process criteria.
Team Design Factors
Team design factors relevant to the TELM model included a narrowly focused task (organize a Future Search conference with 64 key leaders in the field of HRD); a tight deadline (four months); and volunteer FSSG team membership from within ASTD's Research-to-Practice committee. The nine-member FSSG team was composed of five core members, one volunteer facilitator from outside the ranks of ASTD, two ASTD research officers in liaison roles, and one member in an ASTD administrative role. A clear line of "authority" in the form of team commitment to the success of the project for ASTD and AHRD existed, although the sponsoring organizations exerted little, if any, formal control mechanisms.

Of these design factors, the volunteer composition and the energizing and shared leadership within the team were credited with successful completion of the task. At first blush, the volunteer nature of the team appeared happenstance, with one member noting that "when we put the team together we gave no real consideration to the relative strength or the working styles of the individuals." However, interviews revealed subtle self-selection criteria among those who volunteered: (a) keen interest in an intellectually stimulating project; (b) desire to contribute to the field of HRD; and (c) desire to enhance working relationships with valued colleagues.

Team members reflected on what kept them going as the project grew in size and intensity, with some spending as much as 20 hours a week outside of their regular jobs at the peak of activity. Working with respected colleagues was a key factor: "I've been more motivated by the chance to work with [team members] than I have the thought of we're going to put a fantastic book out ... I get a lot from the relationships ... on the steering group."
This desire to work with "a finely tuned team of professionals" was, for many, a compelling reason to join the FSSG, but all acknowledged that what maintained the team's momentum was energizing and highly effective leadership, a role that was shared by several team members. Early on in the project, the member who had volunteered to lead the team began clustering various tasks into "blocks" of work; team members volunteered to spearhead a block of work and were called "blockheads," a term that was one of the group's many inside jokes. Dividing up the task and then monitoring the resulting progress became a coordinating leadership role that was essential to effective team management. Team members agreed, however, that leadership actions were dispersed, with the informal leadership role within the group assumed primarily by another member of the team. Instead of vying for competing roles, team members welcomed others' leadership efforts and attributed this to the volunteer nature of the team:
[G]iven the nature of the project and the fact that we're all volunteers, I think you've got to have somebody who's pushing it forward all the time ... we each divide up the work and take on different components but [team member A] invariably will jump in and do a little bit just to shove it along ... it always seems to be good stuff and it tends to make you think and keep pushing a little harder yourself.
Individual Factors
While energizing and shared leadership and the volunteer nature of the team were deemed essential team design factors, individual input factors also contributed heavily to successful task completion. The TELM model considers interpersonal behaviors as the foundation for individual inputs and a direct function of team members’ interests, motivations, skills, abilities, values, and attitudes. For the members of this virtual team, individual factors provided intrinsic rewards and created a trusting environment that made success possible.

One of the GTPQ questions specifically asked about the equitable distribution of such intangibles as participation, project visibility, authorship of the book, and editorship of papers and conference articles--all motivational factors in the minds of team members. Most team members agreed that everyone had an opportunity to contribute in areas that interested them--"everyone gets a piece of the action"-- while one member noted "it's not an issue of trying to be greedy and hog all the glory (none of us has time for it!) … [but] I think some of us have more visibility in certain areas … this is a high-stakes issue because a book authorship is an extremely tangible professional accomplishment." Learning about the Future Search methodology (Weisbord, 1992; Weisbord & Janoff, 2000) and learning about teamwork in a virtual environment were motivating factors, as well:
I've also learned how an ongoing virtual conversation ... can contribute to collective efforts that far exceed what any one individual can do ... this has been a tremendous learning, for my experience in face-to-face task forces and group efforts had led me to believe that a few people usually do all or most of the work. Here the work was truly shared according to each person's ability to contribute.
An attitude of respect for professional colleagues permeated the virtual experience for team members. Each had an opportunity to contribute his or her own special interests and talents, and each trusted that others would see their portion of the work through to completion. The ability to do high-quality individual work that was then brought back to the team for discussion was a repeatedly mentioned theme: "For a project of this complexity to work, you've got to have people on the team that can run with whatever their passion is ... for the team to disperse and people to be doing their thing and bring it back and let the team crunch on it."

Good written and oral communication skills proved essential in a virtual conversation. Clearly, members realized that it was important that they make allowances for different modes of individual expression and create what one called an attitude of "slack": "There's something around creating slack ... Giving people the benefit of the doubt when they appear to be on your territory or saying something that's negative." Thus, motivated by an opportunity to work with respected colleagues, to share in tangible outcomes according to each team member's interests and abilities, and to learn from one another created the necessary trust for virtual collaboration.
Process Criteria
In addition to team design and individual inputs, our lessons learned came from many process factors, some of which we stumbled into and others that we created intentionally. The TELM model considers process criteria to be the effort expended, the knowledge and skills brought to bear, the planned strategy or techniques adopted, and the group dynamics that emerge from collective action.

Pre-existing relationships among the Research-to-Practice committee members that had been established in a face-to-face environment proved essential to commitment in a virtual one. Telephone conferences added the emotion of tone and voice to messages exchanged electronically, and, most importantly, humor created and sustained a shared group culture that grew through the weeks of conference preparation. One member referred to the "lubricant of a keen sense of humor" and noted that it was hard to get tense in a flurry of metaphors and one-liners. "I think the teleconferences ... help glue things together for us. They re-establish ... you can hear the chuckle that goes with the joke." Without the pre-existing relationships, most doubted that the team would have been able to collaborate so easily and with such clarity.

All acknowledged that more was shared in this team culture than the occasional humorous remark that lightened the workload: Each team member's commitment to the task and to the other members functioned to prop up the group as a whole and maintained a "high level of intensity" without a long lag time between virtual meetings or E-mail exchanges. E-mails were characterized as "rapid fire." No sooner did a message go out than a flurry of responses picked up the dialogue exchange. While conducive to capturing the flavor of real-time conversation, this also proved disconcerting at times for our London colleague:
Every now and then I’d go to bed at ten o’clock which is five Eastern [time] having checked all my E-mails and being up to date and while I'm asleep dialogue is taking place in North America ... And I wake up the following morning ... and see that the dialogue has changed quite drastically as a result of ten different E-mails going back and forth ... I sit there and say, "I've missed this. I feel like I've got to take them back a step in order to say what I would have said…"
It was in this process area that we also recognized our most serious shortfalls. In the world of virtual teams, we were decidedly low-tech, relying heavily on E-mail and teleconferences as our primary communication mechanisms. In retrospect, all acknowledged that we could have benefited greatly by using an electronic bulletin board or some form of virtual collaboration software, such as WebEx® that provides chat rooms for synchronous conversations. The deluge of E-mail traffic was overwhelming at times: "It was tough to stay on top of them. If you took a few days off and didn't have E-mail access and you suddenly came back, you were 30 to 60 E-mails behind."

Many of the process techniques we adopted became "enabling" structures and protocols that evolved over time as we worked together in a virtual environment. We discovered that a pre-set agenda, sent out by E-mail the day before a teleconference, was essential to effective time management. Not only did it allow the blockheads to summarize their work ahead of time for all to read in advance, but also team members were able to pose questions for the group to consider before a scheduled call. This process allowed us to tackle a sizable number of items in an hour and a half teleconference and come to resolution on them. Dates and times for the calls were set after posing alternatives and letting the group decide on those most convenient for everyone, as opposed to a time that was established by team leadership. Teleconference calls were also planned well in advance for scheduling purposes. During the call, the formal team leader kept notes on actions agreed upon during the call, placing them right into the text of the agenda in bold highlighted text. Within minutes after completion of a teleconference, the team leader sent out a revised copy of the agenda by E-mail with the actions agreed upon highlighted. This allowed anyone who missed a call to be quickly brought up to date.

Overall, team members credit advance organization; pre-planned and electronically distributed agendas, followed by agendas sent out by E-mail immediately after a teleconference with action items; and a lively and active interchange of E-mail dialogue as processes that enabled them to reach their goals. These enabling protocols, however, were only mechanical processes. Individual attributes skills and abilities, shared commitment, and desire to contribute to the field provided the relational processes of virtual collaboration, and they proved to be as essential as any mechanical techniques.
Discussion
When we examine our first research question about how our experiences in virtual collaboration compare with the TELM model of team effectiveness (Ginnett, 1996; Hughes et al., 1999), we find that the three elements of team design, individual inputs, and process criteria were all essential to successful task completion. Each element functioned similarly to the model's basic design: individual inputs contributed to team design, which, in turn, affected the process criteria of effort, knowledge, skills, and strategy. These process criteria were supported by highly effective group dynamics within the team.

In contrast to the model were our experiences in organizational input factors. As a volunteer group, we came from many different organizations within both public and private sectors, and we were largely a self-directed and self-supported team. The TELM control system factors, such as reward systems, educational, and informational systems that comprise the usual organizational inputs, were missing from our collective experiences. However, we all understood that ASTD and AHRD had specific expectations for sponsoring the Future Search Conference and we acknowledged collective responsibility for delivering results that would be deemed worthwhile. In addition, ASTD provided the funds to support the conference and the administrative resources to ensure its logistical success. One of our team's members was heavily involved in administrative staff support on behalf of ASTD and two others provided key roles as ASTD research officers. Without their sponsorship, the team would not have been able to function as effectively as it did to ensure a successful conference outcome.

Our second research question asked about the respective contributions of team design, individual inputs, and process factors to team effectiveness. Among team design factors, we found that a clearly defined task with a short time frame for task completion and a high stakes outcome created compelling momentum for this virtual team. Volunteer membership permitted self-selection based on individual interests, motivations, and personal desires for professional recognition and contributions. Norms, developed through membership in ASTD's Research-to-Practice committee, already existed, and we were able to build on them, creating a shared vocabulary that formed the basis for many humorous exchanges that lightened the workload and alleviated tension. This, in turn, sustained a healthy team culture.

The most important of individual inputs that contributed to effectiveness were team members' shared motivations to participate in the effort. Collectively, we were motivated by opportunities to work with respected colleagues, to enhance academic publishing in a variety of forums (e.g., book chapter authorship, conference presentations), and to contribute to the field of HRD in a meaningful way. We believe that the importance of shared motivations in accomplishing our task cannot be under-estimated. Shared motivations created a powerful synergy among team members and encouraged individuals to contribute specific skills and abilities, including leadership talents. They formed the basis of a trusting team environment.

Among the process criteria that contributed to our effectiveness as a team, we believe that the combination of individual talents, knowledge, and skills resulted in a team culture with well-established, effective group dynamics. Team leadership was an important aspect of our group dynamics. With prior knowledge of the specific strengths and potential contributions from various members, team leadership (both formal and informal) designed strategy to utilize team member strengths fully. Shared leadership was also effective in dispersing effort among team members, so that no one individual carried the whole load.
Conclusions and Recommendations
When Future Search methodology was adopted for strategic planning to explore the future of workplace learning and performance, volunteers in ASTD's Research-to-Practice committee had little virtual team experience in collaboration. The tight four-month time frame for organizing the conference meant that team members had to jump into the process without much pre-planning. We used the tools that each of us had readily accessible: electronic communication via E-mail and the telephone for conference calls.

Instead of the organizational reward systems typically used to enhance motivation and encourage productivity, we had our own personal interests and the support of two professional organizations that we were all committed to seeing successful in their endeavors. We saw the Future Search planning project as an opportunity to work with respected colleagues, to enhance professional relationships, to involve ourselves in an intellectually exciting learning endeavor, and to collaborate in publishing conference outcomes. These individual factors proved to be powerful motivators. They shaped the team design as a configuration of equals and gave rise to our collaborative processes. As a result, we spent more than 1,300 hours outside of our regular jobs to accomplish our task, often working late at night or early in the morning. We exchanged more than 2,000 E-mails and gobbled up more than 17 megabytes of hard drive space on each of nine computers. We experienced the frustration of a barrage of E-mail traffic that often appeared when we had the least amount of time to deal with it. With the completion of the conference event, our work was deemed successful by our sponsoring organizations. It continues to provide the organizing framework for ASTD and AHRD efforts to shape the future of workplace learning and performance.
What would we do differently next time? Certainly, more sophisticated tools for virtual collaboration exist; we regret that we did not pursue them early in our organizing processes, for they would have undoubtedly enhanced the online nature of our dialogue, saved hard drive space, and avoided E-mail overload.

What would we recommend repeating in future virtual collaborations? Volunteer membership, strong and respected leadership dispersed among team members, shared personal motivations for success, and organizing techniques such as pre-planned agendas and post-conference call summaries. Most importantly, our first hand personal knowledge of each other allowed us to build upon our relationships when relying on virtual methods.
Contribution to New Knowledge in HRD
In an increasingly global world, organizations are likely to use advanced communication techniques to create groups that work in virtual time and space. This case study provides evidence that, in spite of today's technologically sophisticated means for virtual collaboration, human relationships are essential for effectiveness in a geographically dispersed team. Face-to-face relationships sustained our diversity in experiences, perspectives, and written and oral communication styles. Organizations need to consider how to provide a time and place to establish such relationships, or, conversely, how to take advantage of existing interpersonal relationships when establishing virtual teams. Our experience has taught us that relationships among virtual team members are essential for successful outcomes.

This paper was submitted to the Theory and Research Symposium at AHRD International Research Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, February 27- March 3, 2002.
Gary L. May, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, School of Business
Clayton College & State University
Address: Morrow, GA 30260
Work Tel.: 770-961-3673
Fax: 770-463-9677
E-mail: garymay@mail.clayton.edu


Teresa (Terry) J. Carter, Ed.D.
Executive Learning Strategies, Inc.
Address: 9325 Cardiff Loop Road
Naperville, Illinois 60563
Work Tel.: 804-674-6148
Fax: 804-674-5782 or 804-272-9328
E-mail: terryc@erols.com


Jennifer D. Dewey, Ph.D.
Director of Internal Evaluation & Quality Assurance
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL)
Address: 1120 East Diehl Road, Suite#200
Richmond, VA 23236-1516
Work Tel.: 630-649-6509
Fax: 630-649-6700
E-mail: jennifer.dewey@ncrel.org
R&D Update Summer 2009


In This Installment:

• Translation of the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire
• Scoring Improvements for the CWQ
• Linking Forces with Global Players
• John Bing’s Conference Presentation at the Global Forum

1. First Translation of the Culture in the Workplace QuestionnaireTM

ITAP’s Culture in the Workplace QuestionnaireTM is now officially a multi-lingual instrument. Translating the CWQ into multiple languages will increase the applicability of the tool by expanding the potential base of respondents.

Ann Dougherty, with invaluable support from Claudia Wabel and her associates at TWIST Consulting/ITAP Germany, led the effort to bring a German language version of the CWQ online June, 1 2009. This was what will hopefully be several translated versions of the CWQ. Please note that the translation includes not only the actual CWQ questions and subsequent feedback, but also user instructions to fully enable a multi-lingual experience. We have established this translation capability as a part of the CWQ online system in order to ensure that this assessment tool will always be ready for future projects—even if assessments need to be conducted in different languages.

Because many respondents will soon be able to take the CWQ in the language of their choice, the overall value of the CWQ and its subsequent results will also increase. The growing number of CWQ respondents will over time lead to improvements in the country scores that we report to respondents.

The following improvements and upgrades in CWQ supporting materials have been recently introduced:

• An updated certification manual
• A new CWQ facilitator checklist to reflect these updates
• Updated email template
• Up-to-date facilitator instructions

Ann Dougherty has sent updates to those who administer the CWQ an update regarding these improvements. If you haven’t received this information, please contact Ann directly.


2. Scoring Improvements for the Culture in the Workplace QuestionnaireTM

In its continuing work on improving the reliability of the CWQ, ITAP’s R&D Team undertook an effort to examine the questions and the formulae that are used to calculate dimension scores for the CWQ. This effort allowed the R&D Team to assess both the reliability and the face validity of dimension scores for various countries.

Though the final adjustments to the CWQ scoring system were relatively minor, facilitators and users alike should see a change in the CWQ’s face validity (i.e., Do the scores “feel” right?) of dimension scores across CWQ respondents.

We appreciate the feedback and helpful suggestions we receive regarding the CWQ as well as other instruments and aspects of ITAP. We encourage feedback and know that the best ideas often come from end users and facilitators. Keep it up!

And if you haven’t already done so, please follow the link below to join the group and get involved in the initial discussion postings on our LinkedIn group site. If you have already joined, check back often to see what’s new.

Join my LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/924747

Possible topics/uses of this discussion group could include:

• A place to share and discuss new ideas and solutions in your day-to-day global business settings

• Expert advice from ITAP’s global Associates and Affiliates on various management and consulting practices

• An open forum for clients or potential clients to pose questions to the global ITAP network


3. Hofstede Website: Linking Forces with Global Players
Along with itim international and the itim focus group, ITAP has reached an exclusive web-linking agreement with noted Dutch social scientist, Dr. Geert Hofstede. The CWQ is derived from the work of Dr. Geert Hofstede, who developed this questionnaire to illustrate culturally dependent work preferences. He is Director (Emeritus) of the Institute for Research on Intercultural Cooperation (IRIC) at the University of Limburg at Maastricht, the Netherlands. Dr. Hofstede's pioneering study of IBM affiliates in fifty countries, elaborated in his book Culture's Consequences, helped to form the foundation of the field of comparative management.
ITAP licenses the Culture in the Workplace QuestionnaireTM from Dr. Hofstede and has the worldwide exclusive rights to its use. The author ofCulture's Consequences, the most important work in the field of cross-cultural quantitative research, Dr. Hofstede has quantitatively analyzed how workplace values are influenced by culture. Geert Hofstede analyzed a large data base of employee values scores collected by IBM between 1967 and 1973 covering more than 70 countries, from which he first used the 40 largest only, and afterwards extended the analysis to 50 countries and 3 regions. In the editions of Geert Hofstede's work since 2001, scores are listed for 74 countries and regions, partly based on replications and extensions of the IBM study on different international populations.


4. A Presentation on Process and Teams at the Global Forum in California
John Bing, along with Verna J. Willis, recently presented a session on the effects and outcomes of process on global and action learning teams at the Global Forum in San Jose, California. The Forum is hosted by Dr. Yury Boshyk, Chairman, Global Executive Learning Network. Bing emphasized that improving process can measurably improve performance and provided examples of the relationship between process and performance on teams. Dr. Willis, who co-authored a volume on Action Learning with Lex Dilworth, noted that “the tremendous potential of action learning groups is that they allow individuals the spontaneity of challenging their own familiar assumptions and role-enactments. They find personal curiosity unleashed perhaps as never before since childhood, and they become personally invested in undertaking new learning that often turns out to be unexpectedly offbeat and extraordinarily generative of new ways of doing things.”

Those interested in receiving a copy of the slides from this presentation, or on learning more about measuring process on global teams with ITAP’s Action Learning Team Process Questionnaire (ALTPQ), can contact Dr. Bing directly.
Local Diversity and Inclusion

A Local and Global Perspective on Diversity
ITAP’s diversity and inclusion (D&I) practice helps organizations leverage diversity to achieve their desired business goals. ITAP sees diversity operating on two levels. One level is local. Here, we address issues such as diversity at the local school, hospital, or a local hotel, office or factory that hires minorities to join their existing labor pool. This local level of diversity and inclusion is addressed in this page. The second layer of diversity deals with diversity as an essential competitive advantage for global corporations and is addressed in a separate page.
Diversity at Work: Diversity and Inclusion
With consultants in over 30 countries, ITAP understands that the perspective on and manner in which we deal with diversity on a local lever differs. In Europe, for example, ITAP serves organizations for whom diversity is often about “them,” and the diversity challenge lies in the tension between an older population and more recent migrants. Open borders within the European Union has resulted in greatly changed demographic makeup of communities. Dealing with this requires diversity expertise. Clients in Europe typically seek to get along better with “them,” and improve communication and collaboration.
In Canada and the USA, diversity and inclusion are commonly thought of as building upon the legal framework of Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity which define certain “protected classes.” In the US, diversity work is often a compliance issue focused to protect the rights or the workers could be disadvantaged or discriminated against due to gender, age, sexual orientation, race or ethnic background.

While different perspectives on diversity exist between the US and Europe, it should be noted that there are diversity compliance issues in Europe and an extensive need for cross-cultural awareness in American work settings.

Organizations turn to ITAP with a variety of diversity and inclusion needs. ITAP’s approach is to link these needs to specific business goals. Drawing on a comprehensive range experience, ITAP applies leading-edge diversity and inclusion methods and technologies to help clients:
• Increase productivity and innovation to meet the needs of existing customers
• Expand their customer base to include distinct populations and demographic groups
• Strengthen internal and external communication and collaboration
• Promote employees on the basis of merit and performance
• Avoid discrimination and legal penalties
• Improve the recruitment and retention of under-represented groups
ITAP works with all types of organizations including:
• Large and Mid-sized businesses
• Government agencies
• Law enforcement
• School districts
• Hospitals and long-term care facilities
To make D&I initiatives sustainable, ITAP always ensures alignment with organizational goals. This is a foundational component of ITAP’s D&I practice. ITAP helps organizations create an inclusive workplace in which all stakeholders work together towards common goals or business outcomes. Diversity and inclusion are about the mix of similarities and differences in the workforce, taking into account human attributes. Clients seek interventions to improve operating results and manage their reputation by building cooperation and collaboration. The diversity intervention typically focuses on creating an inclusive workplace that welcomes the contribution of all employees, both regardless of, and because of their cultural identity.
ITAP's Local Diversity and Inclusion service description continues below. However, if you would rather schedule a meeting with one of our diversity experts, just fill out this form.


ITAP's Research-based Tools for Diversity
ITAP supports its diversity and inclusion practice with unique tools and processes that are research-based and vetted and reliable across cultures. ITAP’s proprietary tools can be used to diagnose and resolve diversity challenges. For example:
Compliance Diversity Challenges ITAP Tools
• Promote employees on the basis of merit and performance
• Avoid discrimination and legal penalties • Competency Profiler
• Competency Assessor
ITAP’s competency tools ensure that organizations have the right people with the right skills in the right jobs. Organizations identify capability gaps at the individual level, and then aggregate this data to identify gaps at the job, team and organizational levels. The capability data can be likened to a map, or a blueprint. Based on the blueprint, ITAP draws up a plan broaden and deepen the talent pool available to the business - facilitating “career pathing,” internal mobility and transferability across functions and departments. This helps avoid discrimination and legal penalties and increases productivity.
Diversity Challenge ITAP Tools
• Increase productivity and innovation to meet the needs of existing customers
• Expand the customer base to include distinct populations and demographic groups
• Strengthen internal communication and collaboration • Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ (CWQ)
• Global Team Process Questionnaire™ (GTPQ)
• Organizational Team Process Questionnaire™ (OTPQ)
The Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ (CWQ) is used to:
• Identify cultural preferences within and across groups
• Uncover similarities among people who consider themselves different
• Define differences in a non-judgmental vocabulary
• Identify behaviors and skills that help people bridge and leverage differences
The CWQ is particularly useful for organizations with employees, partners, or customers from more than one national cultural group. It may also be very helpful with extremely-diverse domestic organizations. The instrument builds sensitivity to cultural differences and provides a framework for people to develop skills in communicating and working effectively with, and understanding the needs of, people from cultures other than their own.

The Global Team Process Questionnaire™ (GTPQ) and the Organizational Team Process Questionnaire™ (OTPQ) measure human processes on global or domestic teams. They provide a baseline for the team’s current state of human process interactions. Against that baseline, companies can measure change, identify areas for improvement, compare results to industry averages, and eliminate barriers to high performance.

ITAP International Locations

With Regional offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia, ITAP International and our Alliance Associates and Affiliates can serve global clients from over 25 locations worldwide. ITAP developed the Alliance to support clients internationally, offering global reach and delivery, and integrated, value-added expertise across the principal HRD / OD and cross-cultural management development agendas.
ITAP AMERICAS
USA - Regional HQ
ITAP International
Phone: +1 215 860 5640
Fax: +1 215 860 5676
Address: 4 Terry Drive, Suite 5
Newtown, PA 18940
USA
E-mail: itap@itapintl.com

With affiliates and associates in: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, USA
ITAP EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST and AFRICA
United Kingdom - Regional HQ
ITAP EMEA / Kimball Consulting Limited
Phone: +44 1923 222433
Fax: +44 1923 246088
Address: Park House
15-19 Greenhill Crescent
Watford Business Park, Watford
Hertfordshire WD18 8PH
United Kingdom
E-mail: itapeurope@itapintl.com

With affiliates and associates in: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Kenya,Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, UK
ITAP ASIA PACIFIC
South Korea - Regional HQ
ITAP Asia Pacific
Phone: +82 2 2195-5080
Fax: +82 2 2195-5090
Address: 1315-1316 Yongbieocheon-Ga,
75 Naesu-Dong
Jongno-Gu, Seoul, 110-070
South Korea
E-mail: itapasia@itapintl.com

Web: http://www.itapasia.com/

With affiliates and associates in: Australia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam


References

• Indian export and import portal http://exim.indiamart.com/
• Flatworldknowledge http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/international-finance-theory-a/202935#web-202935
• Global Business Abbas J.Ali Jai co publications, Hyderabad, India
• International monetary fund http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/1999/06/tanzi.htm
• Lajos Bokros and Jean-Jacques Dethier, eds., 1998, Public Finance Reform During the Transition: The Experience of Hungary (Washington: World Bank).
• Adrienne Cheasty and Jeffrey Davis, 1996, "Fiscal Transition in Countries of the Former Soviet Union: An Interim Assessment," MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies (Netherlands), Vol. 6, pp. 7–34.
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1998, Transition Report, 1998 (London).
• Vito Tanzi, 1992, Fiscal Policies in Economies in Transition (Washington: International Monetary Fund).
• Itap international http://www.itapintl.com/
• Bing, J. W. (2001). Developing a Consulting Tool to Measure Process Change on Global Teams: The Global Team Process Questionnaire™. Paper presented at the 2001 Academy of Human Resource Development Conference, Tulsa, OK.
• Duarte, D. L., & Snyder, N.T. (2001). Mastering virtual teams. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Fisher, K., & Fisher, M. D. (2001). The distance manager: A hands-on guide to managing off-site employees and virtual teams. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Furst, S., Blackburn, R., & Rosen, B. (1999). Virtual teams: A proposed research agenda. Paper presented at the 1999 Academy of Management Conference, Chicago, IL.
• Gersick, C. (1988). Team and transition in work teams: Toward a new model of group development.Academy of Management Journal, 3(1), 9-41.
• Ginnett, R. C. (1996). Team effectiveness leadership model: Identifying leverage points for change. Paper presented at the 1996 National Leadership Institute Conference, College Park, MD.
• Gliddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hackman, J. R. (1990). Groups that work (and those that don’t). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Hollender, E. P. (1978). Leadership dynamics: A practical guide to effective relationships. New York: Free Press.
• Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., Curphy, G. C. (1999). Leadership: Enhancing the lessons of experience(3rd ed.). New York: Irwin McGraw-Hill.
• Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (2001). The discipline of teams. New York: John Wiley.
• Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Development sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 348-399.
• Weisbord, M. R. (1992). Discovering common ground. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
• Weisbord, M. R., & Janoff, S. (2000). Future search (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
• Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE publications.

Imprint

Publication Date: 01-31-2011

All Rights Reserved