The book being used for our study of globalization begins with Environmental Foundation, which has three chapters, Globalization and International Linkages, The Political, Legal, and Technological Environment, and Ethics and Social Responsibility. Chapter 1 Globalization and International Linkages builds on the linkages presented in the video clip Earth from Space introduced in the last entry. As we viewed this documentary we related it with the economic linkages taking placed among countries of the world. Chapter 2 continues presenting linkages between political, legal, and technological environments. Given these foundational elements Chapter 3 addresses how individual ethics impacts the multinational corporation’s (MNC) practices in being socially responsible to its National Charter. There are interesting underlying dynamics in these chapters that are our primary focus to uncover.

Today’s chief executive officers (CEO) are managing many types, sizes, and nationalities of MNCs, which are the dominate institution of our time like the Church and the State in the past and we need to deeply analyze them in order to understand what makes them tick. The successful global manager, Luthans and Doh (2012: 4) suggest, is one effectively applying “management concepts and techniques in a multinational environment and adapting management practices to different economic, political, and cultural contexts.” From the principles management textbook (Jones and George, 2009) this is called contingency management, which takes this equation form B = f(P,E), where B is behavior, f stands for function of, P is the person, and E is the environment identified by our authors as economic, political, legal, technological, and cultural factors. These factors are interrelated, vibrating and changing – one of our objectives is to track them in-time on-line and journal about them. 

The birth and evolution of the modern corporation is a fun read and should be given carefully study. The Canadian documentary, The Corporation Website, supported by this interesting website (see their Blog) begins with this segment What is a corporation setting the scene for the rise of the modern corporation. Next view this clip on the Birth of the Corporation to examine the issue of the corporation as A legal person. This sets the stage for the Supreme Court decision in The Story of Citizens United v. FEC (2011)  that led to record spending in the 2012 Presidential election. Remember Mitt Romney stepping into the fray saying corporations are people. This is a complex and current issue facing MNCs and after watching these clips we can address the question posed in this video clip, Is It Just Corporate Free Speech?  As a senior MNC mangers, prepare positions on this issue and post it below.

Globalization has existed since man and woman, to be specific The Real Eve, began moving Out of Africa to circle the globe 150,000 years ago. Luthans and Doh (2012: 4) International Management in Action (IMIA) – Tracing the  Roots of Modern Globalization presents an interesting overview as the “forerunner of modern international trade.” I can remember having a conversation with a fellow graduate student in 1970 about the interdependency of world economies. His miss-guided thinking was that the U.S. economy was quite independent. This same year, we started seeing the first Toyota subcompact cars appear on US roads and before long Toyota surpassed General Motors as the number one automobile manufacture in the world. The success of Toyota  is a good example for our study of international management and the pressures created by globalization. We will be studying the impact of Japanese Culture on the Toyota Corporation. The point being made here is that to become a successful manager, we need to be keen students of history and how it is affecting culture.

Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, identifies ten flatteners that are impacting globalization. The trans-continental fiber optic cable and the World Wide Web are key factors in Time Magazine naming its 2006 Person of the Year as “YOU”, indicating it is the individual that can compete on a level playing field – in a flattened interconnected world. With improvements in communication and transportation the ideas of off-shoring and out-sourcing two other flatteners kicked in. If we go to Fargo’s Sanford Clinic for an ex-ray, it can be digitally sent to India to be read by a qualified doctor and by the next morning it will be on our doctor’s desk ready to act on – and for one-third the cost. Who has not asked the operator on an 800 call – where are you locate? Here is a visit Friedman took to India to explore the phenomena of out-souring call centers. It is easy to see from this example the shifting balance of economic power that is now taking place. ABC News Report On Outsourcing To India Part 1/2 prepares us to discuss India’s role in the flatting world.

An appropriate introduction to our interconnected world begins in Chapter 1 with an introduction to social media, specifically with the case on Facebook’s influence. I will venture to guess we all have Facebook and Twitter accounts. I did not get excited about Facebook until it was opened to businesses. I then created a separate page for my business Scherling Videography Facebook and linked it to the Family business FB page Scherling Photography Facebook. The idea is that when our young student customers, Facebook friends, indicate a wedding is in the works, an ad from Scherling Videography is fed to their sidebar. How might the class make use of Facebook and other social media?

When the movie The Social Network about Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook founding came out, it got a lot of attention and my class at the time went to see it. If you have not seen it, I recommend you do. CBS’s 60 Minutes conducted an interview with Zuckerberg and Charlie Rose also conducted a Zuckerberg interview. You do not need to view these clips fully now but they do give us a beginning look into a very influential global MNC and its controversial, wealthy CEO, which we will be addressing in future chapters. However, what I want to call attention to is Dr. Joseph Burgo’s psychoanalysis of Zukerberg, the movie personality, having a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is the first video clip at Burgo’s resourceful website. Then consider the distinction Sam Vaknin’s makes between Narcissist or Psychopathic personalities. Finally, several corporate case histories are presented which lead to Dr. Robert Hare, FBI consultant on psychopaths, to propose a pathology of commerce, which links individual and corporate psycho pathologies. Reflect on these analyses and comment below on how they aid our mystery investigation into global corporate capitalism.

References

Jones, Gareth R. and George, Jennifer M. (2009). Contemporary Management, 6^th Ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.