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Riots, and the political reactions that followed, in the European Union and in the USA, will likely serve to turn the World Trade Organization (WTO) away from its purely material bent and into an institution that engages the social, cultural and environmental concerns of the world community. It may well wind up being modeled after the EU. At future meetings, members of the WTO will undoubtedly be pressured into dealing with many of the issues aired in the streets of Europe and the USA. Creating a more democratic WTO should appease many of the disparate constituencies that openly voiced their reservations about the WTO’s narrow commercial focus and also permit the world’s poorest nations to finally begin to benefit economically from the globalization movement.

This chapter addresses international educational governance by exploring some of the factors contributing to increasingly internationalized national educational policymaking and the ways that related trends in educational policymaking either constrain or shift to meet particular needs and challenges within specific national contexts. After discussing the phenomenon and the impact of globalization on international educational governance, the role of the state, and some examples of both contextualization and bounded rationality, the impact of national policy convergence is discussed. This chapter concludes by summarizing the ways that national policy convergence became the focus of international educational governance and national educational policy based on the same ideas and structure through seemingly different implementation, but often-identical measurable outcomes. Examples from Japan and Saudi Arabia highlight the discussion.

Does the rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Central and Eastern Europe lead to supraterritoriality? The analysis of FDI flows between world investor countries and Central and East European (CEE) hosts between 1989 and 2000 shows that the majority of FDI flows into CEE in this period do not exemplify a trend of undifferentiated transcendence of post-communist borders. Rather, FDI flows continue to be based in territoriality and embedded in existing social relations between investor and host countries: migration and trade flows, historical ties, political alliances, and cultural affinities. Nevertheless, the rhetoric supporting the opening of post-communist countries to FDI is widespread and consistent with the neoliberal credo, which has acquired a supraterritorial character. Ultimately, we see that embeddedness and supraterritoriality co-exist but they manifest themselves for distinct FDI phenomena: the concrete economic practice and the economic rhetoric, respectively.

Expanding on the findings of the SOPIFF research project, this paper aims to identify eight futures schools of thought, which are analyzed and critiqued through an integral framework. As “Part II” of a previous publication, it seeks to focus on the lower (plural) quadrants.

The paper adapts Ken Wilber's integral theory to clarify various philosophical orientations to the future. It also adapts Fredrich Polak's approach to futures as a matter of “social critique and reconstruction”; however, the approach is global, civilizational, and integral, so it proposes civilizational critique and integral reconstruction as a method for evaluating futures schools of thought.

The IF framework is found to be a valuable theoretical and analytical tool for clarifying images of the future; it shows lines of development within each quadrant and interactions between quadrants, illustrating the effectiveness of the four‐quadrant approach.

It further illuminates the “global problematique” expressed in the SOPIFF project and proposes the IF framework as a way to interpret those research findings.

This approach to futures/foresight studies broadens the range and offers more depth to conceptions of the future, so it should help to develop/improve futures methodologies/practices in general.

Civilizational critique and integral reconstruction of images of the future imply unprecedented social change.

The paper should help futurists to see and interpret the “bigger picture” of civilizational futures through revealing the “crack” of the modern image of the future, how it relates to the current world crisis, and what is needed to heal the crack, so a new vision of a preferred future can emerge.

Since much of civil society groups’ attention has been on pressurising specifically corporate companies to take up their responsibility towards society, it has been an area of focus that is attracting increasing debate. Today companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) ranges from ‘going green’ to supporting local charities. However, one thing is increasingly clear: it is not a choice any longer. Employees expect it, and companies need it. What used to be considered good public relations, or window dressing for community relations, is in fact linked to how well a company's employees perform. In fact, in a Global Workforce study done by Towers Perrin (2009) it was found that CSR is the third most important driver of employee engagement overall. For companies in the United States (US), an organisation's stature in the community is the second most important driver of employee engagement, and a company's reputation for social responsibility is also among the top 10 drivers. Importantly, this is one example of the increasing authoritative influence of a rising global civil society in international affairs.

This chapter examines the impact of national membership in international organizations on female entrepreneurship. Drawing on the institution-based view from global strategy and civil society theory from international relations, we show how international organizations can promote entrepreneurship opportunities for women with respect to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). This research has both practical and social implications. From a practical perspective, it provides important insights for policy makers and entrepreneurs. Policy makers can use the findings to understand how the international organizations that countries join affect entrepreneurship, particularly the United Nation’s SDGs Entrepreneurs can also use the findings to advocate mutually beneficial conditions for host environments, particularly those dedicated to female empowerment. A sample of 44 countries, 5 years of data, and 130 country-year observations finds robust support for our assertions.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to the literature on work, gender, and globalization using an intersectional approach.

Methodology – The data for this chapter are derived from two years of qualitative fieldwork at a Mexican multinational corporation. I conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 86 employees at all levels of the organizational hierarchy as well as content analysis of the company magazine.

Findings – My findings suggest that globalization leads to similar benefits for women and men, with respect to autonomy and decision making in the workplace, but are framed distinctly depending on class. Globalization is gendered in that it offers an additional benefit of economic independence to women. Women at different levels of occupational prestige, however, experience the globalizing process in diverse ways. I conclude by suggesting that globalization results in a tension within the company in how to incorporate female workers in a more meaningful manner.

Originality/value of chapter – Research on globalization in the developing world primarily examines factory workers or women in certain occupations, such as domestic workers. This study focuses on an overlooked group of workers that includes female and male white-collar workers. It offers a comparative analysis of the gendered and class-based effects of globalization on workers of different ranks within the same company. Most globalization studies on Mexico center on the Maquila industry, whereas this study examines workers in a Mexican-owned international company.

We suggest that globalization, a process that fosters greater interdependence and mutual awareness among actors around the world in their economic, political, social, and cultural interactions, will also decrease the social distance among them and thus increase individuals' propensities to cooperate with distal others. We demonstrate in a multi-country public goods experiment that among the four domains of individual participation in globalization, economic participation in globalization has the least effect in prompting cooperation. Conversely, the other three domains of globalization have strong effects on individual cooperation, and this is robust to different specifications of the econometric model.

EU competition policy may be explained as a system: an organized set of objectives, rules, functions, procedures and authorities, acting in unity. A system is a complex reality, immersed in a complex context and permanently changing to overcome its dysfunctionalities and to adapt itself to environmental challenges. Globalization is its major challenge today. This paper proposes to understand globalization from four viewpoints. EU competition policy should respond to an evolutionary, contradictory, relative and systemic globalization. The aim of this paper is to identify the responses adopted in order to react to all these different dimensions of globalization.

This essay explores the relationship between neo-liberal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and globalization in the region. It starts with an overview of the increasing level of globalization activities in the CEE countries. The first section of this essay also shows remarkable cross-country diversity among the CEE countries regarding the extent to which their citizens participate in four aspects of globalization, outbound tourism, citizens working abroad, students studying abroad, and internet use. The second section of the essay identifies three ways in which neo-liberalism could affect citizens’ participation in globalization activities. A direct impact of neo-liberalism on globalization could be expected through the spread of similar neo-liberal economic policies and practices in CEE, which would then create the conditions for making citizens in the region more likely to get involved in globalization. Indirectly, neo-liberalism is expected to (1) increase self-reliance among citizens and (2) reduce the level of government spending on social programs, such as education and health care, thus creating less attractive social conditions in each country. The analysis in section three of this essay shows conflicting evidence about the linkages between neo-liberalism and globalization in Central and Eastern Europe. Increased labor-flexibility, one of the most pronounced aspects of neo-liberalism, is associated with reduced participation in globalization activities. The indirect impact of neo-liberalism, however, is quite pronounced. Neo-liberalism is positively associated with the extent of self-reliance among the CEE citizens, yet it also leads to reduced government spending on healthcare and education. Both reduced reliance on the state and reduced spending for these programs, on the other hand are associated with an increase in globalization activities of CEE citizens.