Globalisation - Issues part 2

Pg. 2 What is globalisation...
... and when did it begin? Information from www.globalisationguide.org

'Many see it as a primarily economic, phenomenon, international trade, investment and capital flows.
However, one can also point to a rapid increase in cross-border social, cultural and technological exchange as part of the phenomenon of globalisation...

'Globalisation is the rapid increase in cross-border economics, social, technological exchange under conditions of capitalism'

A Dutch academic who maintains a good website on globalisation, www.globalization.org, Ruud Lubbers, defines it as process in which geographic distance becomes a factor of diminishing importance in the establishment and maintenance in the cross-border economics, political and socio-cultral relations.

Left critics of Globalisation  define the word quite differently, presenting it as worldwide drive toward a globalised economic system dominated by supranational corporate trade and banking institutions that are not accountable to democratic processes or national governments. 

Pg. 9 Corporate Globalisation

Information from CorpWatch

Global Reach

• Fifty-one of the world's top 100 economies are corporations.
• Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are greater than Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product. Using this measurement, WalMart is bigger then Indonesia. General Motors is roughly the same size as Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary combined 
• There are 63,000 transnational corporations worldwide, with 690,000 foreign affiliates
• Three-quarters of all transnational corporations are based in North America, Western Europe and Japan
• Ninety-nine of the 100 largest transnational corporations are from the industrialised countries'

The first extract introduces you into a academic and critical thoughts into globalisation, it is interesting to see how there can be such different takes on globalisation. It also gives a clean and fast start to a definition of it.

The second it some facts about corporate globalisation and it shows a clean insight into how corporations are spread through the world and see cleanly how them countries benefit.