Globalisation is a term that is increasingly being used in various texts and speeches. We normally associate globalisation with the economy, with the reality of a global market. However its implications go beyond that.

As Tony Giddens pointed out, it is also about the transformation of time and space in our lives. Distant events, whether economic or not, affect us more directly and immediately than ever before.

The continuous achievement of technological innovations has turned the world into a global village, leaving its impact on the individual nation states.

In the past, this concept was coined as the convergence thesis. Whereas advanced industrial societies continuously quest to achieve the latest technology, they must inevitably adopt their economic, social and political structure into increasingly similar patterns. Thus creating a scenario in which globalisation leads to integration and standardisation of countries.

Technological innovations, especially the spreading of information technology, is leading to a “borderless” world.

Technology keeps continuously evolving and innovations get easily and quickly copied round the globe.

This is contributing to shorten the product’s life cycle.

Global market competition is getting harsher all the time. Organisations have to keep up with this technological pace, while competitiveness pressures contribute to the emergence of the multinationals’ economies of scale.

Global market constraints have an enormous political impact on the individual nation state. Governments do not seem to have any more ideological choices left to adopt, but a standardised western mode of “production”.

As Ohmae, 1995 pointed out; the nation state became a fiction and where politicians have lost all effective power.

It seems the politician’s choice is restricted to one inevitable (logic) ideology; the one to privatise, to liberalise, to minimise the state’s role in the economy, in other words to use the free market principles.

Malta is not immune to this phenomenon.

We must compete. The role of government in the economy must therefore be aimed towards the creation of a competitive environment, in providing a “fertile” nation capable of attracting and securing foreign direct investment.

To a certain extent Malta is handicapped by its lack of prime natural resources such as oil and metal.

The most important natural resource that we must rely on is the human factor, that unlike technology it is far more complex to copy.

Human resource remains a crucial factor of production. Modern management realised the importance of developing its “own” workforce, to keep up with the pace of technological change. It is a means in which an organisation closes a performance gap between what is and what should be. Investing in developing our main resource is therefore imperative to attract foreign direct investment.

Developing human resources on a national level is utterly important.

There is a need to have a practical, efficient, and creative educational system; not just “exam racing”. In various occasions our national education system has been under attack, and certain results give credit to such criticisms.

Most 16-year-olds give up studying while absenteeism in secondary schools is a major problem.

The end result is unemployment or, worse, structural unemployment.

The latter is projected in the form of a mismatch between the skills demanded by the market such as IT skills and the supply of skills provided by the “reserve” labour force.

The main problem lies when it comes to train this kind of unemployed who lack basic educational skills.

This situation is problematic to local employers.

The industry’s competitiveness is partly disturbed because of a shortage of qualified staff in areas such as engineering, technical and services trades. Thus the government’s strategy in tackling this situation requires constant investment in our educational system, hopefully with the aid of local industrialists.

Globalisation dynamics require constant change in every aspect of life. These pressures are therefore not only modifying nation states’ economies but also their culture. This is leading to another phenomenon coined as Globalisation. Tony Giddens stated that globalisation not only “pulls away” from the nation state it also “pushes down” – it creates new demands and new possibilities for regenerating local identities.

The main contributor for this situation is obviously the powerful means of communication, such as the television and the internet.

It is turning nation’s borders into frontiers.

It influences what we dress, the music we listen to, the way we dance and talk.

It promotes English language that is “polluting” various “native” ones, for instance Italian. These are the instances in which we start to realise that we are being “McDonaldised”.

We may feel like losing a part of us, that is our national identity. Individuals who experience being part of a nation as an element of their identity are not suffering from an illusion.

It is normally defensible for them to protect their identity against forces that might threaten it.

This gets more evident once technology, the free movement of capital and labour, and migration, lead to “soften” the countries absolute sovereignty concept. We are heading towards more cosmopolitan nations, where cultural pluralism must not only be tolerated but accepted.

True democracy has to be inclusive, therefore preserving one’s cultural identity may be regarded as part of the pluralism concept.

As synonymous with the corporate strive for profit maximisation, the multinationals’ first obligation is towards the shareholders.

The socio-political impact of this scenario is visible and tangible and it must make us reflect. Globalisation does not automatically mean discarding our social responsibilities.

The leftist political spectrum constantly requires finding new ways to promote social justice to counterbalance global market forces.

Free trade can bring about a certain degree of economic development but it may also be socially destructive.

The shift of multinational corporate investment to countries adopting sub-standard industrial legislation promotes degrading labour conditions in the form of sweatshops.

This practice has been described as the “new international division of labour” by Frobel et al.

There is a common concern among those analysing international difference in employment and general levels of economic activity with a need for international agreements on both trade and labour market standards.

The International Labour Organisation is about to launch a comprehensive report on forced labour, proposing a new global initiative to abolish such practices.

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