The reach of American culture has extended far and wide across the world. Disney now runs theme parks on three continents; McDonalds, having opened restaurants to sell hamburgers everywhere, has recently expanded into hotel business in Switzerland; the Marlboro man sells cigarettes throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia; surveys routinely find that American sports (Michael Jordon), music (Madonna), and movie (Julia Roberts) stars are the most recognized people in the world; American TV shows such as Friends: ER, and The Simpsons are dubbed into dozen of languages and rebroadcast; and American staples such as blue jeans and Nike shoes have become staples everywhere else as well.
The Value of American Domination
American cultural domination has grown ever stronger over the past fifty years, and today American culture can be found in almost every country. However, many question the value of this dominance. Is the United States opening opportunities to people around the world, or destroying local cultures and customs? Do American cultural exports offer people more choices or fewer choices? Are we heading toward a global uniformity, or can we retain regional and cultural differences? And what caused American culture to be so dominant anyway?
The Role of Global Trade
It is important to recognize that American culture has spread primarily as a result of trade-Executives at McDonalds, Nike and Coca-Cola export their products around the globe not out of a sense of moral obligation, nor as a part of crafty plan to subvert the worlds population; they export their products, and with them American culture, in an attempt to make a profit.
The past 40 years has seen the biggest and the longest economic boom in history, resulting in rising standards of living for people around the globe, and massive profits for the international corporations which have benefited from global trade opportunities.
This expansion in trade is largely due to reductions in the trade barriers between countries. Where most governments once tried to protect and isolate their countrys economy from the global marketplace, there is now a rush to participate in global trading. Today companies regularly merge across national lines to form multinational corporations, and relocation to manufacturing sites to countries with cheaper labor costs is normal.
Reasons for Americas Success.
But why has American culture come to dominate in this way? To begin with, North America itself is a large and wealthy country, with a huge and diverse population. U.S. corporations that do well at home have already succeeded in marketing and distributing for a great number of consumers. For American companies, the jump from national to international marketing and distribution is not as great as it is for those from smaller countries. Further, American companies can afford to spend a great deal of money marketing their products around the world, and are able to undercut the prices of local products.
It is worth noting that, for entertainment, fast food, carbonated drinks and so on-areas in which the U.S. has come to dominate-America was the first in the field.
In the development of music recording technology, the U.S. was ahead of anything anywhere else in the world. This made jazz music accessible to people of all classes and exportable around the world. It is even truer for moving pictures, an American innovation in their mass-market form. So it seems that very early in the last century, a pattern of American dominance in key areas of mass entertainment had already been created.
Why American Success Continued?
Much of American cultures success appears to lie in the fact that American corporations are wealthy, and that they were ahead of others in certain areas. But how have they continued this dominance? One answer to this lies in the fact that people associated United States with wealth and success. This is particularly true in countries from which many people have emigrated to America. The idealized view of America as the land of the free, where the streets are paved with gold, live on. By purchasing American products, people can buy a little of the countrys glamour. Wherever you live, and however much you earn, wearing Calvin Klein jeans makes you look like a wealthy westerner.
American culture has the added appeal that is not only glamorous, it is also usually easy to digest. This applies to products from the sweet fizzy taste of Coca-Cola to Hollywood action movies. U.S. culture is generally unsophisticated, and so can be appreciated by everyone. American TV shows and movies rarely have unhappy ending, and are usually fast-placed, holding your attention with car chases and love scenes. Like hamburgers and ice-cream-laden milkshakes, American entertainment provides us with simple pleasures.
Globalization and the Future.
American culture today owes its dominance to combinations of glamour, technology, marketing and the U.S. massive wealth.
In all, globalization is a scary term. It somehow implies the world turning into one giant American-style shopping mall, where cultures, languages, customs, and individual rights are dissolved by commerce. But this is not what globalization has to be about. America itself has been greatly influenced by other cultures-Western and non-Western alike. One needs only to look at the Afro-Caribbean roots of jazz and rap music, the popularity of Pokemon, the growth in the practice of Islam, the Mexican food in U.S. diets, and the tens of thousands of American kids who enroll in karate classes every year, to realize that American culture is continually influenced by cultures, ideas, and individuals throughout the world. Globalization need not imply influence in only one direction.
In our report we described you the notion of globalization and what challenges it offers to contemporary managers.
The notion globalization can be defined differently, but it certainly is a process of eliminating national borders and transforming world into one global village.
Todays world is characterized by the rapid changes difficult to adjust to. National borders are nearly meaningless in defining an organizations operating boundaries. Technology changes in the way the information is created, stored, used and shared have made it more accessible. Job opportunities are open for knowledge workers. Population is characterized by cultural diversity. Economy is driven by small entrepreneurial firms. All these factors have great affect on how the business is to be done by contemporary firms.
As success comes from bringing together people from different continents and cultures, managers need to think across borders and have a global vision. The differences of cultural environments were researched by Geert Hofstede. He has classified certain characteristics into four groups of national culture. That helped managers to manage diversity.
A global marketplace is characterized by existence of MNCs, TNC, and borderless organizations. When the decision to go global is made, a company may choose its own strategy to operate internationally. Some of the approaches to international business are domestic-market approach, multinational approach, and global approach. There are four key factors to which management must pay special attention to have a competitive advantage. They are strong customer focus, improvement of quality and productivity, development of human recourses, and continuous improvement stressed in every area of the firm.
When doing international business managers perform basic functions of management, which are now concentrated on achievement of high productivity, maintaining competitive advantage and on keeping the company afloat. The functions of management are planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling.
Each successful manager should be aware of problem areas he/she may encounter. Thats why they always have to consider the difficulties of operating in foreign environment. And ability to learn from other cultures is a very important quality for manager to succeed in dynamic business world.
In conclusion it is worth saying that we cant consider certain problem from one point of view. That is why we tried to focus on different views and believes. The best way to understand globalization from different sides is to compare it with the fire. Fire itself is neither good nor bad. Used properly, it can cook food, sterilize equipment, form iron, and heat our homes. Used carelessly, fire can destroy lives, towns and forests in an instant. Globalization can be incredibly empowering and incredibly coercive. It can democratize opportunity and democratize panic. It makes the whales bigger and the minnows stronger. It leaves you behind faster and faster, and it catches up to you faster and faster. While it is homogenizing cultures, it is also enabling people to share their unique individuality farther and wider.
Globalization has dangers and an ugly dark side. But it can also bring tremendous opportunities and benefits. Globalization will always have cheerleaders who are blind to the destruction globalization can cause. And it will always have strident opponents blind to the way globalization gives some people their first opportunity to fulfill basic aspirations.
As with most issues, the majority of people will be in the middle. They will see globalization not as something to worship or demonize. Instead, they will see it as something to mold, shape and manage for the betterment of everyone.
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