The Second Programme: To Start with Testing the Definition of Globalization.

In his text "Globalization: Myths and Realities",which we discussed on January 10, Robert Boyer tried to test the principal meanings of the term "globalization".First, the global convergence of markets (Levitt), due to the fact that firms everywhere sell the same thing in the same way; then the extension of this notion to the whole chain of creation of stocks and shares (Ohmae 1990), leading to the fact that multinational firms have a form of management which is integrated on a worldwide scale. Or the process used by multinational firms, to their own profit, to redefine the rules of the international game which were formerly controlled by the United Nations (Reich). Or finally, a split regarding inter-nationalization with the emergence of an economy in which national economies are broken up and linked up again within a system of transactions and processes operating directly on an international level (Ohmae 1995).

From this first critical examination, an image of internationalization emerges which is certainly less attractive than "globalization" but more operational, that of a muddled order which results in the combined action of six principal tendencies: the reinforcement of multinational firms; the formation of rules of private law on an international scale, in the domains which international institutions do not cover; the development of sector-based arrangements by firms; the formation of new international institutions; the development of three principal economic zones; and finally the strengthening of regional management which is decentralized from collective local goods. But at this stage of our reflection on internationalization, examining the definitions just on a theoretical level has its limits, and it seems unlikely that we can ratify one without proceeding to analyze the forms of internationalization at the level of the different branches, as the GERPISA programme for the automobile proposes.

Viewing the present phenomenon of internationalization in a long historical perspective links it with the dominant characteristics of the beginning of the century. From a certain point of view the movement of internationalization seems to leave aside the period of social regulations introduced on a national scale after 1945 and even introduced in several countries after the major crisis of 1929, to come back to internationalization considered as the norm. However, what was achieved during the "Fordist" period remains a legacy, and cannot be simply erased.

The current "adjustment" of these acquisitions for the good of competition has not dissolved them. Furthermore, several elements which existed at the beginning of the century, like a stable international monetary system, no longer exist.

In this movement of the decomposition of the Fordist pay compromise, the heightened mobility of direct investments plays a significant role, especially through the relocation of establishments in developed countries. It has already modified wage relations, with the lowering of salaries, the movement of taxation towards fairly immobile areas of the economy, like real estate assets and salaries, and by new forms of production...At the moment this movement seems to be in operation in Germany and Japan, while in the USA, it is already very advanced. Some German researchers feel that the movement has in fact already been achieved in their country. According to them, the German compromise lies in the combination of capital and work to assure international competition for products made in Germany. Today, relocation seems to be a way of getting around this combination. The foundation of German wage relations would then be affected.

The end of earlier pay compromises in Japan or in Germany does not necessarily bring about the generalization of the Anglo-Saxon system. On the one hand, as we have recalled, this system has also felt the same effects of current internationalization. On the other hand, these national systems have specificities which give them different advantages, but mostly equivalent to those of the USA, as we can see in such domains as accounting law and the control of financial markets...Finally, the transformation of institutions is not an automatic development, but the result of strategic choices.

With the international redistribution of cards that is now taking place, developing countries are not at an advantage because of the extreme concentration of decisive factors such as Research Development, or even the heightened mobility of production. Economies can take off, as the example of Korea shows us. However, like the Little Dragons, this country has benefited until recently, from a particular geopolitical context characterized by support given by the United States for political reasons, at the moment its economy was taking off. Today South Korea is obliged to open up by becoming a member of the OECD.

Index of number 110 ;
All the Research Questions in La Lettre du GERPISA ;
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