ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to explore some of the ways in which globalization has become an actor in many of the workplaces of the world through the networking potentials of information and communications technologies (ICTs), and the relationality and interconnectedness engendered by them (Urry 2003). Globalization, and in particular global competition, has been positioned as a key driver for workplace change in recent years, impacting upon the nature and organization of work and the requirements of workers to more readily adopt a learning disposition to their labour. Messages for such change are carried in the policy-led discourses of lifelong learning, as well as the hyperbole of business gurus and in the popular media. They are not without opposition, of course, both academically and politically, but this has not stopped them from being powerful.
