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Globalisation is generally defined as the “denationalisation of clusters of political, economic, and social activities” that destabilize the ability of the sovereign State to control activities on its territory, due to the rising need to find solutions for universal problems, like the pollution of the environment, on an international level. Globalisation is a complex, forceful legal and social process that take place within an integrated whole with out regard to geographical boundaries. Globalisation thus differs from international activities, which arise between and among States, and it differs from multinational activities that occur in more than one nation‐State. This does not mean that countries are not involved in the sociolegal dynamics that those transboundary process trigger. In a sense, the movements triggered by global processes promote greater economic interdependence among countries. Globalisation can be traced back to the depression preceding World War II and globalisation at that time included spreading of the capitalist economic system as a means of getting access to extended markets. The first step was to create sufficient export surplus to maintain full employment in the capitalist world and secondly establishing a globalized economy where the planet would be united in peace and wealth. The idea of interdependence among quite separate and distinct countries is a very important part of talks on globalisation and a significant side of today’s global political economy.

The operational component of a company’s short‐term plan (amounts of products to be delivered and sold to various markets at prices that vary according to markets, sales channels, types of customers and quantities sold, levels of utilization of production capacity, assignment of resources to the manufacturing of different products, amounts of raw materials purchased from different sources, stocks of raw materials and finished products) gives rise to a series of cash inflows and outflows which are not synchronized. The financial component of a company’s short‐term plan has to indicate how to compensate the imbalances, in time, generated by the operational plan, between availabilities and requirements of cash, and indicate the sources of financing to be used and how to temporarily invest cash surpluses. The approach, too often followed in companies, that defines the financial component of a company’s short‐term plan as a consequence of the operational component of the plan, ignores the potential interactions between them and the possibility of defining simultaneously a more economic interfunctionally integrated plan. A model is presented for the decisions in the operational component and a model for the decisions in the financial component. If these models are used separately, they can be integrated resorting to an iterative approach that mutually adapts their separate solutions in order to define the company plan. However, the best approach is to build a model that integrates the two separate models into one structured in a way that can define the optimal integrated short‐term operational and financial plan. The lack of integration between the operational and the financial components of the short‐term company plan is a common weak point in the existing literature and practice.

THE end of October saw the return of most of our overseas visitors, continental and otherwise, to their homes, leaving with us pleasant memories of a mutually successful visit. The Englishman's proverbial difficulties with foreign tongues, even of neighbouring France, did not complicate matters unduly or reduce too much those interchanges which conference and school afforded. We can repeat our frequently‐expressed hope that there will be an ever increasing series of visits, both of the foreigner to England and of ourselves as foreigners to other countries. We would welcome longer stays in both cases. Nothing but good can come from them.