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Business Research in Brazil and Latin America
Edited by Professor Mohamed Amal/Göran Svensson
Introduction
The notion that the world has become a global village is shared by almost every person on earth. Events, discoveries, technologies, and crises that make headlines in one part of the world are swiftly brought to the notice of many people all over the world. Globalization can be defined in several ways ([11] Czinkota and Ronkainen, 2007; [28] Peters and Pierre, 2006; [10] Curry, 2000). In this paper, we adopt [10] Curry's (2000) definition of globalization. For [10] Curry (2000), globalization refers to the worldwide phenomenon of technological, economic, political, and cultural exchanges among nations, organizations, and private individuals (with some emphasis from authors). These exchanges have led to interdependencies at all levels (national, firm, and private individual levels).
Interdependencies at all levels, an inherent feature of globalization, provide several actors (governments, organizations, and private individuals) numerous opportunities such as large markets, access to modern technology worldwide, access to modern and superior goods/services, and fewer barriers to trade and capital flows. It is up to every actor to develop its capabilities so as to be able to exploit the opportunities emerging from globalization. As maintained by [24] Lee (2005), our tastes, needs, wants and demands are converging, a trend termed as "global consumers". It is not uncommon to witness that modern technologies are making it not only easy for isolated places and impoverished people to be exposed to modern goods and services, they are eager for modernity's allurements ([9] Cox and Enis, 1988). However, the potential benefits which globalization provides cannot be realized by many people or countries of the poorest parts of our globalize markets ([31] Spiegel, 2007; [28] Peters and Pierre, 2006; [19] Human Development Report, 2004).
Globalization also comes with enormous challenges such as liberalization of markets, intense competition, decline of domestic job opportunities and revenues, economic volatility of the integrated markets, cyclical crises, and non-tariff barriers to trade, spread of pandemics, and new security issues. Many actors, especially in the least developed countries (LDCs) may not have the capabilities to handle challenges ([31] Spiegel, 2007; [20] Human Development Report, 2002) which globalization brings with it. And above all, one major challenge will be the ability of poorer...