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| MODULE 7: SOCIOLOGY OF WORK, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND LAW
SECTION 4: GLOBALISATION AND ITS IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SAFETY: 1. Globalisation - An Overview |
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| MODULE 7: SOCIOLOGY OF WORK, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AND LAW
SECTION 4: GLOBALISATION AND ITS IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SAFETY: 1. Globalisation - An Overview |
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There are many components to the definition of globalisation. According to the International Labour Organisation [1996], the 1999 Human Development Report [United Nations Development Programme, 1999] and the World Health Organisation Occupational Health Programme [Goldstein, 2001], globalisation refers to the process of increasing economic, political and cultural interdependence of countries over the past 2 to 3 decades.
The Human Development Report [1999] identified the main elements of the definition of globalisation. National economies are increasingly integrated into a world market with increasing trade, international capital flows(foreign exchange, bonds and equities), foreign direct investment (especially in emerging markets) and movement of people across national borders. Globally integrated production systems are characterized by increasing intra-firm trade in intermediate products and new forms of outsourcing of work across national borders. The private sector has assumed increased importance in the regulation of the global economy. There has been increasing removal of tariffs and subsidies, which previously protected and developed agricultural economies in developing countries. New technology, especially information and communication technology (computers and the internet), mobile telephony and the media, are diffusing increasingly rapidly across the globe allowing action at a distance in real time. New international organisations such as the World Trade Organization have arisen which are able to generate new rules and systems for regulating trade and intellectual property, and which are backed by global enforcement mechanisms binding on national governments.
An important political consequence of world production being increasingly transnational or borderless and subject to international market forces, is a decrease in the capacity of national states to control their economies and regulate, while transnational, corporation-driven governance increases. Globalisation has an important cultural dimension as developed country entertainment and media products and services dominate developing countries.
There are also very important cultural dimensions to globalisation involving specific aspects and products of the developed economies in particularly in entertainment and media which constitute a very large proportion of production, export and trade in and from the developed countries.
Globalisation in a general sense is of course not a new phenomenon and represents an historical continuity of the Western capitalist expansion over past centuries in a new form. Whether directly or indirectly, no country or region is untouched by the effects of globalisation.
The drivers of globalisation have essentially been the politically changes internationally. Policy changes characterised by greater market orientation, liberalisation of trade, reduction in control over capital flows and massive changes in the direction of privatisation and deregulation have facilitated international trade and investment flows. Technological factors reducing transport and communication costs have dramatically facilitated production and financial aspects of globalisation.
