7.4 /10 1 Votes7.4
Country United States Subject Globalization Pages 488 | 3.7/5 Goodreads Language English Publication date April 5, 2005 Originally published 5 April 2005 Page count 488 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) and audio-CD Genres History, Business, Politics, Economics, Non-fiction Awards Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Similar Thomas L Friedman books, Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award winners, History books |
The world is flat 3 0 thomas friedman
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is an international best-selling book by Thomas L. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, wherein all competitors have an equal opportunity. As the first edition cover illustration indicates, the title also alludes to the perceptual shift required for countries, companies, and individuals to remain competitive in a global market in which historical and geographic divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Contents
- The world is flat 3 0 thomas friedman
- The world is flat 3 0 by thomas l friedman audiobook excerpt
- Summary
- Ten flatteners
- Proposed remedies
- Dell theory of Conflict Prevention
- Critical reception
- Editions
- References
Friedman himself is a strong advocate of those changes, calling himself a "free-trader" and a "compassionate flatist", and he criticizes societies that resist the changes. He emphasizes the inevitability of a rapid pace of change and the extent to which the emerging abilities of individuals and developing countries are creating many pressures on businesses and individuals in the United States; he has special advice for Americans and for the developing world (but says almost nothing about Europe). Friedman's is a popular work based on much personal research, travel, conversation, and reflection. In his characteristic style, through personal anecdotes and opinions, he combines in The World Is Flat a conceptual analysis accessible to a broad public. The book was first released in 2005, was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006, and was yet again released with additional updates in 2007 as "further updated and expanded: Release 3.0." The title was derived from a statement by Nandan Nilekani, former CEO of Infosys. The World Is Flat won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2005.
The world is flat 3 0 by thomas l friedman audiobook excerpt
Summary
In his book The World Is Flat, Friedman recounts a journey to Bangalore, India, when he realized globalization has changed core economic concepts. In his opinion, that flattening is a product of the convergence of the personal computer with fiberoptic microcable with the rise of work flow software. Friedman termed the period Globalization 3.0, thereby differentiating it from the previous, Globalization 1.0, during which countries and governments were the main protagonists, and Globalization 2.0, during which multinational companies led the way in driving global integration.
Friedman recounts many examples of companies based in India and China that, by providing labor ranging from that of typists and call center operators to accountants and computer programmers, have become integral parts of complex global supply chains; such companies are Dell, AOL, and Microsoft. Friedman's capitalist peace theory called Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention is discussed in the book's penultimate chapter.
Friedman repeatedly uses lists as organizational devices to communicate key concepts, usually numbered and often with provocative labels. Two example lists are the ten forces that flattened the world, and three points of convergence.
Ten flatteners
Friedman defines ten "flatteners" that he sees as leveling the global playing field:
Proposed remedies
Thomas Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening world, the US workforce should keep updating its work skills. Making the workforce more adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more employable. He also suggests that the government make it easier for people to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on one's employer and by providing insurance that would partly cover a possible drop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also believes there should be more inspiration for youth to become scientists, engineers, and mathematicians because of a decrease in the percentage of those professionals who are American.
Dell theory of Conflict Prevention
The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, also known as simply the Dell Theory is a capitalist peace theory and an updated version of Friedman's previous "Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention".
"The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain."
That is that, as long as corporations have major supply chain operations in countries other than that corporation's home country, those countries will never engage in armed conflicts. This is because of the economic interdependence between nations that arises when a large corporation (such as Dell) has supply chain operations in multiple global locations and when developing nations (in which supply chain operations commonly take place) are reluctant to give up their newfound wealth.
In his previous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman argued that no two nations with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another: this was known as the Golden Arches theory. Later, Friedman upgraded that theory into the "Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention" by saying that people or nations don't just want to have a better standard of living as symbolized by a McDonald's franchise in their downtown but also want to have that lump of the labor sector that is created by globalization. That is, developing nations do not want to risk the trust of the multinational companies that venture into their markets and include them in the global supply chain.
Thomas Friedman also warns that the Dell theory should not be interpreted as a guarantee that nations that are deeply involved in global supply chains will not go to war with each other. It means, rather, that the governments of those nations and their citizens will have very heavy economic costs to consider as they contemplate the possibility of war. Such costs include long-term loss of the country's profitable participation in the global supply chain.
This theory relates with how conflict prevention occurred between India and Pakistan in their 2001–2002 nuclear standoff, wherein India was at risk of losing its global partners. The relationship between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan was also cited as an example of that theory: both countries have strong supply relations with each other, and a war between the two seems very unlikely today.
Critical reception
The World Is Flat received generally positive popular and critical reception as well as some negative criticism, peppered with doubt.
The Washington Post called the book an "engrossing tour" and an "enthralling read". The review closed with, "We've no real idea how the 21st century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through".
An opposing viewpoint was found in a 2007 Foreign Policy magazine article in which Professor Pankaj Ghemawat argued that 90% of the world's phone calls, Web traffic, and investments are local, suggesting that Friedman has grossly exaggerated the significance of the trends he describes: "Despite talk of a new, wired world where information, ideas, money, and people can move around the planet faster than ever before, just a fraction of what we consider globalization actually exists." Indian development journalist P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor for The Hindu, says "it's not the 'world' that is flat, but Thomas Friedman's 'brain' is flat."
Some critics have pointed out that the book is written from an American perspective. Friedman's work history has been mostly with The New York Times, and that may have influenced the way the book was written – some would have preferred a book written in a more "inclusive voice".
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has been critical of Friedman's book:
"Friedman is right that there have been dramatic changes in the global economy, in the global landscape; in some directions, the world is much flatter than it has ever been, with those in various parts of the world being more connected than they have ever been, but the world is not flat […] Not only is the world not flat: in many ways, it has been getting less flat."
Richard Florida expresses similar views in his 2005 Atlantic article "The World Is Spiky".
John Gray, formerly a School Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and Political Science, wrote another critical review of Friedman's book called "The World Is Round". In it, Gray confirms Friedman's assertion that globalization is making the world more interconnected and, in some parts, richer but disputes the notion that globalization makes the world more peaceful or freer. Gray also declares, "least of all does it make it flat".
Geographers on the whole have been particularly critical of Friedman's writings, views influenced by the large body of work within their field demonstrating the uneven nature of globalization, the strong influence place still has on people's lives, and the dependent relationships that have been established between the have and have-not regions in the current world-system. Geographer Harm de Blij detailed those arguments for the general public in Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America (2005) and The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization's Rough Landscape (2008).