ABSTRACT
I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.
William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, 1596-8, Act 1, Scene 2, line 78
Towards the end of the twentieth century, it became apparent that fundamental changes were afoot in the world economy that profoundly affected business, politics, society, citizens and the ways in which various stakeholders interacted with each other. This process became known as ‘globalization’ – a frequently overused and contested term that came to mean all that was good or bad in the world economy. For those who welcomed the supremacy of markets and economic liberalism, globalization offered the possibility of boundless growth and prosperity, not only for developed countries but also for those developing countries brave enough to embrace rather than resist globalization in all its manifestations. For others, globalization threatened rising inequality, economic anarchy and a surrender of political control. In developed countries, job losses and the unravelling of social progress were anticipated as a result of greater competition from low-cost countries whereas developing countries feared that their former colonial subjugation had been replaced by the dominance of market forces and its agents in the form of multinational enterprises (see Chapter 5).
