Today's business environment has been called a "global village," and many Americans simply accept without question the concept that transportation, finance and telecommunications has made the world a "smaller" place. Traditionally, attention has focused on the benefits to consumers and corporations by the global economy, including greater choices for consumers, and lower costs for companies. However, globalization and world trade has not been greeted with universal enthusiasm, and demonstrations at various meetings of the World Trade Organization have illustrated the resentment that globalization in generalùand the World Trade Organization in particularùcan generate. Criticism of the effects of globalization has become more vocal in recent years, and the so-called Washington Consensus has also come under increased scrutiny. This research considers globalization, the criticism of globalization, and the Washington Consensus as well as possible alternatives to the Washington Consensus.
Multinational companies came into existence before the twentieth century (the East India Trading Company is a prime example), but advances in telecommunications and transportation systems in the twentieth century resulted in a profound increase in the number of companies with transnational operations. Some companies (referred to as "global" companies by some analysts) market to different nations, but maintain operations in a single company. Thus an American company might export products made within the United States to other nations, but would not otherwise have operations in the destination country. Other companies (referred to as "multinational" companies by analysts) have operations (production or other facilities) in more than one nation. Both global and multinational companies produce an economic impact in nations other than their "home" country, but multinationals are generally considered to have a greater effect since their level of acti...