ABSTRACT
At the recent colloquium in Dublin organised by the European Commission to launch its Green Paper on the Information Society (European Commission DGV 1996), one of the main criticisms the very diverse conference participants aimed at the Paper was that it took insufficient account of globalisation. Indeed, globalisation has become one of the most fashionable catch-phrases used to describe current trends in the restructuring of capital and of labour markets throughout the world, whether by policymakers, academic researchers, employers, trade unions, or non-governmental organisations (NGOs). However, the word is rarely defined precisely, and one suspects that it carries quite different meanings for different users.
