The Dynamics of Globalization: Toward an Operational Formulation

1 I personally witnessed this scene at the Singapore airport in July of 1995. For an interesting discussion of the dynamics and consequences of `McDonalization', see Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage Publications, 1995), pp. 7-8.

2 Cf. Ashley Dunn, `Ancient Chinese Craft Reshaping Building Design and Sales in U.S.', New York Times, September 22, 1994, p. 1.

3 Stephen Gill, `Globalization, Market Civilization, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism', Millennium, vol. 24 (Winter 1995), p. 405.

4 James H. Mittelman, `The Globalization Challenge: Surviving at the Margins', Third World Quarterly, vol. 15 (1994), p. 427.

5 Peter Sloterdijk, `Nationality - A View From Above and Within', Bard College Bulletin (Spring 1991), p.3.

6 Derek Leebaert, `Innovations and Private Initiatives', Washington Quarterly, vol. 15 (Spring 1992), p. 114. Despite this observation, however, Leebaert brings attention to Coca-Cola `given that by the end of the decade the United States may account for no more than 10 percent of the profits of this quintessentially American company, whereas international profits were just 50 percent in 1985'.

7 See, for example, the account of how one on-line company was induced by the policies of one country to block access to discussion groups elsewhere on the Internet in Nathaniel Nash, `Holding Compuserve Responsible', New York Times, January 15, 1996, p. D4.

8 James N. Rosenau, `Distant Proximities: The Dynamics and Dialectics of Globalization', in Bjorn Hettne (ed.), International Political Economy: Understanding Global Disorder (London: Zed Books, 1995), pp. 46-64.

9 As one observer puts it, the more recent range of devices, and perhaps most especially the Internet, involve `a dialogical and interactive capacity which enable distant others across the world to pursue us and make demands on us to hit deadlines, as we strive to manage wider networks with more intense information interchanges'. Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism, and Identity (London: Sage Publications, 1995), p. 7.

10 Witold Rybezynski, `Mysteries of the Mall', The New York Review, July 14, 1994, p. 31

11 For a cogent analysis of isomorphism in the realm of national economies, see Thomas Biersteker, `The “Triumph” of Neoclassical Economics in the Developing World: Policy Convergence and Bases of Governance in the International Economic Order', in James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (Eds), Governance without Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 102-31.

12 A useful discussion of isomorphism and how it operates to induce similarities in organizations can be found in W. Richard Scott, Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 3rd ed., 1992), pp. 183-88 and 209-13.

13 Philip Shenon, `Report Warns of Security Threats Posed by Computer Hackers', New York Times, May 23, 1996, p. A22.