Globalization Through Technology
Through technological advances, the world is seamlessly getting smaller and while technology plays a vital role in shrinking the planet, all technologies are created with a purpose, and culture in the organization plays a pivotal role in how technology is used on a global scale.
Why Does Spreading Technology Matter?
Progression in technology acts as a catalyst in enhancing process improvements and standards of living. These advances do not always develop at the same time, and thus the idea of globalization may take longer to unravel due to geographical and cultural differences.
How Does Culture Play A Pivotal Role In Determining Technological Successes Or Failures?
In most European and Asian countries, internet performance is much better compared to the United States, due to the unavoidable incline of competitive Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
The entirety of the internet stands as a key example, as slower internet means slower productivity, with many organizations moving towards cloud based systems. On the contrary, social networking platforms are immensely popular outside the likes of Asia and China, meaning using social media as a marketing tool is more advantageous in other parts of the world.
As there are multiple factors causing complications, the bottom line remains the same, technology is not going anywhere, it is here to stay, develop and spread.
While globalization has been much criticized for its negative side effects, studies show that globalization has amplified the spread of technology across borders by:
- Allowing countries to gain easier access to knowledge and processes
- Enhancing international competition, strengthening firms’ incentives to innovate and adopt for new technologies
According to a report conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whilst collating growth data for nearly 20 years, the positive impact noted “has been especially large for emerging market economies” which have made increasing use of available knowledge and technologies to boost their innovative capacity and boost productivity in parallel.
The study continued to find evidence that technology leaders themselves benefit from each other’s innovation. This means that moving forwards, with the growing contributions from the various countries to the vast spread in the technological forefront, there is a clear scope of mutual benefits to the organizations around the world.
The key benefit of Globalization can be summarized as “stimulating the spread of knowledge and technology, which in turn helps spread growth potential across countries”. The amalgamation of knowledge and the capabilities of building on it are most often positioned without fulfilling the requirement of a scientific and engineering know-how.
There are several areas to consider for investment to effectively use knowledge that includes:
- Education
- Human Capital
- Research & Development
- Intellectual Property
- Domestic and international legalities
In addition to these investments, it is pivotal for policymakers to assure the positive growth benefits from globalization. Technological innovation are not segmented to a specific demographic, but rather beneficial to the masses – Avoiding exploitation of those within control of these new technologies to have excessive control of a market.
The positive side for business dealing with manual labor costs is the ability to access lower cost labor and materials as it leads to business contracting manufacturing to countries like China. The cost of shipping the finished product(s) are still less than the price in differential wages and manufacturing costs. Cloth and clothing were the first goods to be outsourced, but has since included electronics to no surprise.
With reduced barriers in communication and transportation costs, organizations are free to move to places where conditions favor them. American organization have commonly moved their manufacturing to China not just because of the cheaper labor, but also with the ease of doing the business with the advancement of technologies. With the advancement of technologies, the repetitive jobs will be augmented through Robotic Process Automation.
Technology and lower cost of access to energy have impacted the way the world does business, and by reducing costs of B2B transactions. These reduced costs are driven by a comprehensive infrastructures to what we know as globalization led through technology.