ABSTRACT
It has become fashionable to attribute any societal or economic change to the influence of globalisation. Doug Kellner (1998: 1), an American academic and social theorist, put it succinctly: ‘globalisation is the buzz word of the decade’. Government documents, the local newspapers, business magazines and the television media have all used the term globalisation. It is a term that gets used so widely it is often not clearly defined. It is not hard to realise that in such circumstances it is being used as a metaphor or code word for many different issues and problems, e.g., from the ‘inevitable and necessary’ march of economic progress to the negative imposition of American cultural homogeneity on other societies. Once, writing about global trends would have meant writing about how things were ‘out there’ and deciding how they would affect us ‘at home’; but now the lines between ‘out there’ and ‘at home’ have blurred. We are having to deal with a world which we don’t fully comprehend, where things seem to happen at a frightening speed and one which seems to be coalescing and disintegrating at the same time. How might we prepare ourselves to meet this future which simultaneously is already here and has not yet materialised? Even to consider this question requires us to examine the issues surrounding globalisation. In this chapter, I want to focus on three aspects: one, to sort out the meanings of globalisation and identify causes and concerns; two, to discuss its effects on contemporary society and in particular business and industry; and three, to explore likely issues and directions for tertiary and workplace education.
