Academic Essay – Globalisation

Academic Essay In this essay, I reviewed that evolving of globalization has constituted a significant impact towards the national culture. Globalization is a process by forcing the national-states opening their borders to allow penetration of global competition in international market in achieving the target of free market practice (Orunmoluyi, 2002). In optimist view of globalization made it possible for secondary or tertiary countries to be able to make connection with the sovereign countries through national trades and capital flows. However pessimist insisted that globalization inevitably eradicates local culture in term of social behaviour, lifestyles, norms and education (Prasad, A., and Prasad, P., 2013). Taking Coca-Cola Company as an example, we can see that the company has influenced global consumer’s taste.

Coca-cola as a global company is able to control approximately 25.9% of global market share due the globalization (Appendix1). Moving on to culture, based on the definition Hofstede (1984, 21) defines culture is dynamic and complex as culture alters when human lifestyles, norms, beliefs and values were being transmitted from the past generations to the future generation based on the five subjects which consist of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individual or collectivism, masculinity and femininity. As the world continues in developing, culture such as language, education, and norms were influenced. The advancement of world-wide access to internet is vibrantly changing users’ ideology in different perspective. Society lifestyle has been affected. Based on the statistic from Wall of Street Journal, there are approximately 1.8billion population users interact through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (Shirky, 2010). Due to the influenced of global interactions, society lifestyles have shifted. For example, due to the influence of Japanese corporation management style forces United States to restructure their corporate management system.

Higher inspection and quality control of Japanese companies causes high demand of products in the market. Many firms are forced to restructure their marketing strategies and increase production quality to meet customer expectation and gain competitive advantage in the business environment (Thomas, 2015). Through the access of social media, society lifestyles had shifted and has resulted a mixture of global culture internationally is defined as global culture hybridization (Pieterse, 1993). An example of cultural hybridization can be seen on the Korean pop culture. It can be seen the Korean culture has stormed the whole nation with their music, dressing, food and movies.

All these factors could influence consumers buying behaviour. Thailand is an example which is being influenced by the Korean culture (Wonkboonma, 2009). Based on the research, approximately a sum of 80% respondent in Thailand purchased products such as clothing, cosmetics and food based on the Korean entertainment influences such as Korean singers, actor and actress (Appendix 2). As a result of research above, it is clearly shown that low uncertainty avoidance behaviour based on Hofstede theory is being practiced by Thailand as to be more open minded to accept other culture and adapt to it (Fougère and Moulettes, 2007). Besides that, globalization has affected the working culture in different ways such as increase in culture diversity (Mazur, 2010). Due to globalization, WTO Free Trading policy reduces the market trading barriers and ends government subsidiaries causes companies to deal internationally in the business environment (Ec.europa.eu, 2015). This forces companies to adapt to the new policies and deal with clients globally. Companies are required to make changes internal and externally of the organization in order to comply with the new business environment to gain competitive advantage. As cultural diversity in workplace increases, management and marketing department will gain new insights and perspective from different culture (Greenberg, 2004). Cultural diversity in workplace which consist of different races and religions employees can help in strengthen companies and clients relationship by effective communication. For example, Deutsche Bank is a Germany bank corporation has successfully demonstrated innovative effects of its diversity management programme and model has resulted a new division of Deutsche bank in Turkish called BANKAMIZ (Köppel and Sandner, 2008). In their company, employees whom are multilingual create a dimension for its company to tailor their services to customers.

This is crucial in helping both German and Turkish to be maintaining a good relationship and in turn contributing innovative products while its company remains committed in strengthening its cultural diversity to gain competitive advantage. Globalization has affects the education systems and created an imperialism of education to the younger generation (David W., 1999). Formal education system has been the medium for an individual to learn language, conceptual and mathematical skills. However, due to globalization on education the introduction of technology learning system has imperialised traditional learning system. Based on the theory of Hofstede, high uncertainty avoidance has been increasingly established in the society to reduce misunderstanding and conflicts to be happened. Structured learning system has been established to ensure there are sufficient interactions between students and teachers during the learning process.

Technology education system made it an advantage of flexibility and effective delivering system to the students and the teachers. The use of technology in classroom changes the pattern of delivering education to students such as online notes, exercises, discussions, assignments and projects in electronic form is now replacing the use of traditional blackboards. With such changes and emergence of video conferencing on the Internet, distance barriers have been overcome at a faster rate in the education system. Global communication technology allows students to discuss and meet new friends abroad without travelling physically, thus developing communication and interpersonal skills, fostering mutual understanding across countries and cultures.

For example, due to evolution of education system, Japan eradicates ancient samurai warrior classes which concentrate on Confucian Studies, reading and writing to their commoners to internationalization education system (Saitou, n.d.). This system creates modern education to allow students and teachers interact with each other. It is clearly shown that, high uncertainty avoidance is implemented in the modern education system compared to the ancient manipulated education system with no interaction at all. Based on Hofstede 1986, 314, modern education system creates a structured learning programme which helps to eradicate open-ended learning system. In addition, the spread of international education as a result of globalization has great impact on culture. Due to the emerging of free trade, education institutions are becoming more market orientated focusing on creating more profits rather than providing sufficient education for students. Free trade policies cause high transparency and ends of protection on specific sectors such as education sector causes high competition and privatisation of education institution. Free trading causes more foreign learning institution to penetrate to local market which causes a threat to the local institution. As a result of this, high competition atmosphere occurs in the business environment leads to misconception and misleading of businessmen perspective.

Based on the research of (Odin and Manicas, 2004), most of the education institution such as higher education institution and private schools is no longer concern about student progression and competences in long term but rather just focusing on making fund and profits. This misleading concept will eventually cause the loss of professionals and intellectuals due to the production of beyond low quality and requirements of graduates into the society. On the other hand, globalization eradicates local tradition and languages used among their country.

Dialects and regional languages are being eliminated due to the frequent and widely use of English language in trade, finance, and technology (Lazaro and Medalla, 2004). The use of English language yields better economic and social value compared to rural or minority languages. For example, Philippine is a multinational country which consists of more than 111 dialects is now the third largest English speaking country (Florido, n.d.). Besides that, due to the use of major language such as English language and Chinese language will cause these languages to be localized based on the regions where these languages they spoke. Based on the research, this phenomenon could lead to eventual non-comprehension between variant forms of English. Due globalization, with the ease of communication through emails, online chatting such as Skype, Whatsapp, Twitter and WeChat eradicates the use of traditional formal and proper style of writing and speaking by taking grammar for granted.

The use of informal English language such as short form ‘you’ to be ‘u’ in text messages and emails has caused the nation to loss the good writing skills. Furthermore, as soon as people in the globalized nation noticed that English is the most important medium to communicate whether it is in the business field or the daily communicating habit will eventually cause English speakers such as United States and United Kingdom nation to refuse in learning second foreign language such as Spanish, French and Chinese. To sum up all my points, globalization has tremendously affected our social lifestyle, working culture, education system and language used in the nation. Among all the points I have discussed above, it is crucial that every party should play significant role in maintaining their position and modifying their roles to adapt to new environment. In order to shape a culture, society needs to look deep into every aspect including of society norms, values, perspectives and beliefs. We must show respect and appreciation to different culture and norms across the globe and be open minded to accept different beliefs in the nation in order to create a harmonise nation. We must not forget to embrace our own culture and belief although globalization is happening in the nation.

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