Understanding the International Environment & Global Business Functions 1 Ed by Julian Gaspar, Antonio Arreola-Risa, Leonard Bierman, Richard Hise , James Kolari

With business becoming increasingly global, its success, fortunately, depends only on the domestic environment. Even though business is global, the credit crisis of 2008, started by an American investment bank, was limited to the American economy with fortunately no impact on the global economy. Key aspects of globalization include the elimination of barriers to trade and information technology So far globalization has made it possible for goods, services, and capital, to cross national borders but not technology and culture. The “soft” qualities essential to globalization include openness, protectionism, accountability, connectivity, democracy, and centralization. A sustainable decoupling process would eventually lead to a multi-polar world—a world economy in which the engines of growth could comprise the United States, the European Union, China, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa rather than the United States aloneThe openness and proliferation of globalization and free trade rules can best be attributed to the interwar period between World War I and II.