Rutgers Business School recently explored the views of Management and Global Business Professor Farok J. Contractor, who unpacks the complex domestic and international impacts of globalization.
The “global consciousness” that globalization engenders through a natural hybrid of “ideas, lifestyles, cultures and phobias” also has to accommodate a “loss of jobs through imports and multinational companies.” Globalization’s double-edged sword often fuels xenophobic sentiment in developing countries that equate “job losses and economic stagnation” with an “influx of foreign products and ideas.” Contractor notes that the truth of the matter is “modernization of lifestyles and industries alter work and life patterns more fundamentally [than globalization].”
Although this is a legitimate concern that politicians amplify in order to manipulate and scaremonger disenfranchised voter bases—more often in areas where immigrants are scarce— the article cites research pointing out that for “every one U.S. job lost through international trade from 1980 to 2016, four jobs have been lost because of automation.” Statistics also illuminate that the domestic risk of foreign-born terrorism is akin to death by lightning or tornado. Immigrants, on average, produce a long-term net benefit, according to the article. Contractor believes that, “Politicians who blame globalization are really alluding to larger socioeconomic issues.”
The erosion of public trust in media institutions has caused many to turn to social media and self-selected peers for their information, which only further segregates and polarizes audiences. “Algorithms for social media sites perpetuate self-reinforcing “filters” that attract and keep viewers by presenting facts they like, while downplaying news that is dissonant or uncomfortable for the particular viewer.”
Contractor concludes, “Each society must find the proper balance for allocating benefits among labor, consumers, management and shareholders. Globalization is a symptom of human desire and ambition leading to ever-increasing connections that brings prosperity, but also pain and opposition. The focus on only negative consequences amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”