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An online monthly research publication by the Ivey Business School
Volume 14, Number 10: Faculty Focus
October 2008
Shih-Fen Chen,
Associate Professor of International Business at
the Richard Ivey School of Business will be
hosting the next Ivey Idea Forum on October
27th, featuring business author James Hemerling.
In his book Globality, Hemerling tells the story
of a new era of international business
competition. Today, companies based in
rapidly-developing economies are now challenging
the corporations that have been globalization
leaders for the past 20 years. Ashleigh Nimigan
recently sat down with Professor Chen to discuss
some of the ideas in the book. She started by
asking him about the term, Globality.
Q. The
Globality idea is that we now compete with
everyone, for everything, from everywhere. Can
you explain this idea a little bit for us?
A. Just look
at your daily life. In the morning, the alarm
clock that wakes you up could be made in China.
You drink coffee, it’s imported from Colombia.
You put on your clothes, they’re made in
Pakistan. You drive your car, it’s imported from
Japan. The car uses gasoline, from Saudi Arabia.
Students come into
the classroom in the morning and think, ok, I
finally have a Canadian product here: higher
education from a Canadian business school. But
when class begins they find out that they
actually have a professor who is imported from
Taiwan. So you see, this is our daily life. Just
look at your daily life and you can see how
globalized society, the economy and the market
are, and have been for a long time.
Q. In
addition to a large-scale global reality,
Globality also affects mentality at the
individual level. How do individuals formulate a
global mentality to cope with today’s global
reality?
A. The term
Globality means global-reality. But Globality
also means global-mentality at the individual
level. A certain aspect of that mentality
affects us, first of all, as a consumer. We’ve
all seen the consumer who insists on buying an
American car in order to protect jobs here in
North America. They might refuse to buy a car
that carries the Toyota brand name; but the
truth is that the American car that they’re
driving was actually made in Mexico and the
Japanese car that they refused to purchase was
actually assembled in the United States. So,
from the consumer perspective judging the
nationality of a product or a company is no
longer relevant. Multinational enterprise global
brands no longer have a nationality. So [the
lesson is to] just buy the product that will
provide you with the best value. That is one of
the lessons for the individual with regards to
global mentality.
The second lesson
applies to the individual as an employee working
for a manager. [As an employee,] you need to
prepare for globalization of the company. You
may say that you want to stay at home [Canada]
and don’t need to care about what happens
outside of Canada, but staying at home is not an
option anymore. First of all, you’re going to
see foreign competition. You might not go
overseas but foreign competitors will come to
you. That is one lesson.
The second one is
about global mergers and acquisitions,
international acquisition. So you might say, “I
want to stay in London, I feel comfortable here,
I don’t want to interact with foreigners.” You
go into the office every morning, you say good
morning to your boss, in English, “Good morning
Mr. Smith.” Well who knows, the next morning the
company could be taken over by a Japanese
company and you may need to go to office and say
" "
or "Ohayo-Gozaimasu" (that is good morning in
Japanese) to your boss who is from Japan. So you
need to prepare for that kind of reality.
That was Shih-Fen Chen, Professor of
International Business at the Richard Ivey
School of Business.
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Professor Chen will
be hosting
James Hemerling,
author of
GLOBALITY:
Competing with Everyone
from Everywhere for Everything
at the Ivey Idea
Forum on October 27, 2008.
Click here for more information.
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