CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 CONCEPT OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization refers to the process of the intensification of economic, political, social and cultural relations across international boundaries. It is principally aimed at the transcendental homogenization of political and socio-economic theory across the globe. It is equally aimed at “making global being present worldwide at the world stage or global arena”. It deals with the “increasing breakdown of trade barriers and the increasing integration of World market (Fafowora, 1998:5). In other words, as Ohuabunwa, (1999: 20) once opined: Globalization can be seen as an evolution which is systematically restructuring interactive phases among nation
ns by breaking down barriers in the areas of culture, commerce, communication and several other fields of endeavour.
Globalization, according to Ohiorhenuan (Ibid), is the broadening and deepening linkages of national economies into a worldwide market for goods and services, especially capital. As Tandon (1998B: 2) once opined, globalization seeks to remove all national barriers to the free movement of international capital and this process is accelerated and facilitated by the supersonic transformation in information technology. It is principally aimed at the universal homogenization of ideas, cultures, values and even life styles (Ohiorhenuan 1998: 6) as well as, at the extraterritoriality and villagization of the world. Expanding this argument, Gordimer (1998), argued, that it is principally concerned with the expansion of trade over the oceans and airspace, beyond traditional alliances which were restricted by old political spheres of influence. Thus, it presupposes the “making or remaking” of the world (Diagne and Ossebi. 1996) by creating “a basic change in the way in which major actors think and operate across the globe” (Biersterker, 1998). In other words, it connotes “the rapid expansion through giant multinational companies of capitalism and their “blood sapping principles” of “liberalization”, “commercialization”, privatization” and “undemocratic and property-based democratization” to several areas of the world including where it had hitherto been resisted or put in check” (Madunagu, 1999, 53).
Multinational Corporations