The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1352-7606.htm Challenges and Challenges and conceptions conceptions of of globalization globalization An investigation into models of global change and their relationship with business practice 23 Christopher Bond Business School, University of Roehampton, London, UK, and Darren J. O’Byrne Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK Abstract Purpose – This paper, which is conceptual in both nature and approach, builds on a recent contribution to the theorization of “globalization” and seeks to utilise the framework developed therein to help promote a more complex conceptual understanding of the potential implications of how business operates and responds to these challenges in a global environment. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws primarily on a heuristic framework developed by O’Byrne and Hensby that reviews eight models of global change. In this paper, the authors review and give consideration to the relationship between these models and business practice and contend that this relationship is far more complex than the majority of the current literature in the business and management field represents. Within the paper, the authors explore and discuss the dynamics of the eight models of “globalization” and assess the potential implications for business practice of working within these often conflicting and contradictory paradigms of “globalization”. As part of this review, the authors consider the strategic implications of “globalization” for business practice and propose a conceptual model with eight strategic options which are aligned to the eight models of global change. Findings – The paper presents a tentative heuristic framework seeking to align the eight models of global change with strategic options that companies might peruse in response to the global forces for change. The paper concludes by advocating a more integrative and complex understanding of globalization than is currently the case and identifies potential for further research in this area. Originality/value – The paper develops a conceptual framework for assessing the challenges that processes of globalization present to business. The paper places a particular emphasis on considering the strategic implications of the various models of global change and offers a tentative framework for further debate and discussion. Keywords Change, Strategic choice, Globalization, Business practice Paper type Conceptual paper Introduction This paper builds on a recent contribution in the theorisation of “globalization”, and seeks to apply the insights from that development to a more complex understanding of the concept of globalization within the field of business. The paper draws primarily on a conceptual framework developed by O’Byrne and Hensby (2012) that reviews eight models of global change. Cross Cultural Management Vol. 21 No. 1, 2014 Within the first part of this paper the authors offer a brief summary of the main pp. 23-38 conceptions of globalization that underpin current thinking in business and q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-7606 management practice. This summary serves to highlight the limits of our current DOI 10.1108/CCM-09-2012-0069 CCM understanding and knowledge in relation to globalization. Further it is claimed that the 21,1 uni-disciplinary perspectives often used to assess and discuss the concept of globalization fail to appreciate the true complexity of the multidisciplinary nature of business and the multifaceted challenges that globalization presents. Following this the authors introduce the conceptual framework developed by O’Byrne and Hensby (2012) and briefly outline how it can be used as an heuristic framework for assessing globalization as a process 24 rather than a thing. The paper then proceeds to review the eight models of global change and assess their potential relationship with business and management practice. The paper also offers a tentative conceptual framework for aligning and evaluating strategic options with the models of global change. The paper concludes by advocating that a greater emphasis and more complex understanding of globalization needs to be embraced by the business community if it is to respond to the challenges that this process creates. The conclusion also identifies potential for further research in this area. Current conceptions of globalization in business and management We begin this paper with the claim that much of the literature on globalization suffers from a narrow understanding of its subject matter. When commentators refer to “globalization” they often do so without any clear, thorough interrogation into the actual dynamics of the process in question. “Globalization” thus becomes a thing, the actual meaning of which is left uncontested. As Tomlinson (2007, p. 148) points out, the “processes and experiences it describes [...] are hardly ever actually, literally global in their reach”. Over the last decade there has been an increasing interest in exploring the processes and challenges of globalization in business and management literature. Much of the literature within this field examines both the concept and processes of globalization from a single perspective. Key literature within the field has considered globalization as processes of: economic integration (Dixit and Norman, 1980; Ohmae, 1995a, b; Wolf, 2004; Dicken, 2007); convergence of markets (Roostal, 1963; Levitt, 1983; Jain, 1989; Peebles, 1989; Yip, 1995; Solberg, 2002; Johansson, 2003); application of cross-cultural management practices (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1987, 1998; Adler, 2001; Schneider and Barsoux, 2003; Steers et al., 2010); and the role, relationship and effects of globalization and technology (Cairncross, 1997; Castells, 1996, 2001; Friedman, 2000; Webster, 2005). There has also been an interest in the effects of globalization on strategic choice (Hout et al., 1982; Hamel and Prahalad, 1985; Porter, 1986; Ghoshal, 1987; Yip, 1989, 1995). Whilst some of this literature assesses the impact of globalization from a systemic or holistic perspective there is in general a lack of integration in assessing the impact that models of global change have on overall business practice or that adopt a more critical perspective. Our conceptualization of globalization is not dissimilar to that offered by Ritzer (2007, p. 1) where he contends that “globalization is an accelerating set of processes involving flows that encompass ever-greater numbers of the world’s spaces and that lead to increasing integration and interconnectivity among those spaces”. Where we depart from Ritzer, however, is in seeing all processes of globalization as leading to increasing integration and interconnectivity. For example, three of the models of global change reviewed (“balkanization”, “creolization” and “polarization”) primarily see the forces of globalization as leading to greater divergence rather than convergence. Understanding global change: eight models Challenges and This contribution treats global change as a complex mesh of overlapping processes, conceptions of often leading in very different directions. Eight such processes are discussed, although these are introduced as general conceptual forms, and the reality of global change globalization exists at the intersection of them all. The eight models are: globalization; liberalization; polarization; Americanization; McDonaldization; creolization; transnationalization; and balkanization. In this section of the paper we offer a short summary of each, but by 25 way of preface, an even shorter summary can be presented in Table I. The first of these eight models is termed “globalization” and is used in this paper to refer to a very specific process of global transformation, which is, in a literal sense, the process of becoming global. The extent to which anything “becomes global” is measurable by the extent to which it exhibits globality, i.e. the extent to which it engages directly with the globe. Globalization thus involves the erosion of mediating layers, such as that of the nation-state, and the emergence of the world itself as a meaningful unit of analysis, akin to what Marshall McLuhan famously termed “the global village” (McLuhan, 1962), or more recently for Martin Albrow, a “global age” (Albrow, 1996). There are, of course, many ways in which something can be described as being “global” in its outreach. The ultimate expression of the globalization of the world would no doubt be the abolition of nation-state boundaries entirely and the unification of the entire human population under a single world government, obedient to a single body of global law, and bound together within a single cultural and economic system. However, globalization as a process need not apply solely to the world. In a single act, such as an act of recycling, an individual can exhibit globality, because in that act she is engaging directly with the world as a single place. A corporation can do the same through its marketing campaign, if that campaign is specifically designed to reach out to the world regardless of borders as its audience. An event or a brand can be global if it is experienced or decoded on a global stage. Whether involving a “global citizen” or by a “global corporation”, the process of globalization thus refers to an orientation to the world as a single space, a definition most closely associated with the sociologist Robertson (1992, p. 132). For Robertson,