Archive for the 'Globalization' Category

Archives for Globalization

When we last encountered Shai Agassi he resigned from his position in software product development at SAP AG and was bashed by the Wall Street Journal “as a failed change agent.”

Agassi’s second act will be far more memorable than his first. He’s raised $200 million in venture capital to build a “new kind of electric car” initially for the Israeli market and then eventually to other countries in the next several years, according to a BusinessWeek article by Steve Hamm.

What strikes me as especially clever about Agassi’s initiative is his idea of separating the battery from the vehicle. “That will allow drivers to pull into a battery-swapping station, a car-wash-like contraption, and wait for 10 minutes while their spent batteries are lowered from the car and fully charged replacements are hoisted into place,” Hamm wrote.

Agassi’s company, called Project Better Place, is based in Silicon Valley. Agassi is also a blogger and certainly worth watching as an innovator. While I hope Agassi’s successful at reinventing the car, I wonder if there’s a third act in his future what it might be. We will be watching.

Here’s a video that introduces the concept.

Archives for Globalization

If you lose your job as a result of globalization, House Democrats want to extend employment benefits to you to ease your transition. There’s a good chance that Republicans, also capable of reading polls, may jump on this bandwagon, too.

Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York, told the Wall Street Journal that benefits have “not kept pace with globalization.” Details are pending on Rangel’s proposed “globalization adjustment assistance” program.

In Western Europe, dislocated workers are provided substantially better benefits than Americans caught in the same situation.  ”In fiscal year 2006, Congress appropriated about $655 million for income support payments and another $220 million for training for trade-affected workers,” according to a recent GAO report on the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

Archives for Globalization

EDS, the wayward outsourcing giant, is stumbling to compete in the global economy.

Cost-cutting was the theme of Wednesday’s announcement to shareholders that the company is beefing up its workforce in low-labor-cost regions while offering “packages” to 12,000 U.S. employees. A company spokesman said, “In order to remain competitive, we must constantly rebalance our workforce on a global basis.”

Frankly, I don’t think they get it. EDS needs to do more than cut costs. It needs radical surgery to reboot its Ross Perot-spawned culture. Until the company adopts a truly global, multi-cultural, multi-national approach to services - starting with its leadership in Plano, Texas - this is a company that is destined to keep downsizing.

One visit to EDS’ headquarters - a monolith on the plains - says way too much about this top-down organization. Those who contend that America is unable to compete on a global playing field will use EDS as an exclamation point.

Archives for Globalization

Opponents of globalization contend that there is an economic race-to-the-bottom underway as first-world economies will be forced to cut their standard of living in order to compete with third-world economies. One prominent supporter of globalization counters that most of the support for this argument is anecdotal - there’s not much smoke and little substance to the charges.Neither wealthy nor poor countries have been seriously damaged as a result of globalization - that’s a key finding by Robert Flanagan, a Stanford economics professor and the author of Globalization and Labor Conditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy, (Oxford University Press, 2006). “I can’t find any evidence that supports the race-to-the-bottom view,” he says.

Archives for Globalization

While the streets of Madrid team with anti-globalization demonstrators, a multinational corporation pits seven candidates for a senior position through a cut-throat job selection process. The winner must be chosen by the end of the day no matter the cost.

This is the premise of a terrific Spanish movie called The Method (El Método), now in limited release (with subtitles) in the U.S.

This bold film starring Eduardo Noriega took several years to reach our shores and, after this brief distribution by Palm Pictures, will go to DVD on August 14^th. The New York Times among others have compared it to Hollywood classics such as Twelve Angry Men.

Adapted from the stage, The Method mostly takes place in a conference room (with a couple of intriguing bathroom breaks); however, The Method might have been aptly called Survivor Madrid.

The candidates are put through a series of vicious tests based on the company’s “Grönholm Method,” requiring candidates to negotiate, compete, collaborate and then vote one another out of the room. No blood is spilled - this is a study of psychological violence. In the movie the MNC is portrayed as unethical - they even videotape candidates in the rest room.

Job interviews are a subject ripe for satire. In the real world it’s not unusual for corporations to put a candidate through five or more hours of tedious job interviews - often facing the same questions each time. Those of you who have experienced the horrors of an intense job selection process - and would like some validation about your feelings - this is your movie.

 

Archives for Globalization

“When the world is flat, whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be by you or to you?” asked Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and best-selling author, sounding a familiar theme in a Tuesday night speech to University of Southern California students.

True or False? Globalization - it’s a meritocracy with Darwinian consequences.

The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist persuaded at least one USC student, someone who sports a cool double-major, according to the Daily Trojan. Riaz Dini, a senior majoring in international relations and biology, said students are prepared to meet this challenge.

“The international system as we knew it in the last century wasn’t really fair. It’s becoming more democratic,” Dini told the paper. “People are getting ahead based on merit and on their own ingenuity and intelligence.”

Yes, but can anyone tell me what Dini’s career will be like in five years?

Archives for Globalization

Watch out, the 2008 U.S. presidential elections are coming and globalization will be all the rage. If Virginia Senator Jim Webb’s recent comments in the Wall Street Journal are any indication, there could be a lot of hot air by politicos yet very little substance to these assertions. Webb wrote: “In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future.”

If you are planning to argue that globalization has negatively impacted the American worker, isn’t it a good idea to compile evidence, rather than espouse gut fear? I wonder how Sen. Webb would parse a decade’s worth of data about unemployment insurance claims, courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics?

What’s telling about this data is the consistency of the numbers - there’s nothing to indicate a rise in unemployment coinciding with, say, China & India’s meteoric growth in jobs and GDP in the past five years. Note that America experienced a downturn in 2001 and 2002 but that jobless claims have been decreasing ever since. No one contends that the post-millennium downturn was related to globalization; on the contrary, it coincided with a recession, 9-11-01, and the dot-com bust. The current 4.5% U.S. unemployment rate doesn’t suggest to me that we’re facing a wave of immigration that is undermining the American worker, but let’s save that debate for another day.