The following are TWO strategies to overcome challenges of globalisation:
i. Managing resources efficiently
ii. Venturing abroad

Which is more important in ensuring Singapore's future economic developments? Explain your answer.

Issue: Singapore's future economic development
Given Factor :
a.Managing resources efficiently
b.Venturing abroad

Rank:
Primary Factor:
Venturing abroad as Singapore is too small to depend on herself. Economic development has to be generated by participating in a globalised world economy.
Secondary Factor:

Managing resources efficiently is also important as Singapore is a small country with limited land,people and water. If these resources are not managed efficiently, then it will not be a good environment for economic development. But being able to manage the environment alone is not sufficient to ensure economic development.

Singapore still need to depend on other countries like China, Japan and United State to sustain her economic development. This is because she has to sell her goods and services to these countries.


Suggested answer.

Several important strategies have been used in ensuring Singapore's future economic developments. Two of these strategies are to manage her resources effectively and venturing abroad.


One of the ways to manage Singapore resources effectively is to develop Singapore human resources. In a globalising world, business competition will increase, it is critical to train a pool of entrepreneurs to venture beyond the boundary of the country. This can help to create more business and trade opportunity for the country's industry. This can prevent the nation from becoming stagnant.

Another way is to ensure that the workforce must be trained and retrained in order for them to remain competitive in the global economy where businesses are getting more mobile. This is critical as it ensure that they remain relevant in the ever changing economy.

Meanwhile the country must continue to try to attract foreign talent. This would help to ensure a ready of experts to be employed in the different industry. The foreign contact which they bring can help to create more business opportunities.

Beside managing the human resources, we must also ensure that the physical environment is well managed. The physical condition of the nation must be maintain in order to continue to attractive to foreign investment. For example, built across the mouth of the Marina Channel, the Marina Barrage creates Singapore’s 15th reservoir, and the first in the heart of the city. With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, or one-sixth the size of Singapore, the Marina catchment is the island’s largest and most urbanised catchment. Together with two other new reservoirs, the Marina Reservoir will boost Singapore’s water catchment from half to two-third's of the country's land area.In this way Singapore need not depend on Malaysia solely for her water needs.

Although managing Singapore resources is a necessary strategy for Singapore future economic development, it is not a sufficient condition. She still has to venture abroad.

Singapore can invest in their neighbouring countries so as to tap on the lower labour costs and new market . For example, Singapore has developed several industrial parks in India, Vietnam and China so that Singapore's business can tap of these countries cheaper resources. In this way, Singapore's economic development can be ensured as the business continue to grow.

Another way it to have cooperation with other countries like forming partnership with other nations which can further strengthen relationship between the nations. Hence, promoting further growth between the 2 countries. One method is to sign Free Trade Agreement with countries like China, New Zealand and Australia. It can help open up more trade and business opportunities for the companies in both partnering countries. These investment can ensure long term growth. The spread of investments across the world would help to ensure that the country's economic growth is maintained even if the markets and investment in one particular region are weakened.

Ultimately, Singapore must always look to the world for her future economic development as her domestic market is too small to sustain her economic growth.Therefore venturing abroad is a more important strategies then managing her resources effectively. Even in her desire to manage her human resources effectively, she still has to venture abroad to attract foreign talent, train entrepreneurs to venture beyond the boundary of the country.Therefore I believe that venturing abroad is the more important strategy.

Sustaining Economic Development

How far was the economic impact of globalisation an important benefit to the world? Explain your answer. [12]

Issue : What benefit does globalisation brings to the world?
Given Factor: Economic impact of globalisation
Alternative Factor: Social impact

Globalisation is a double-edged sword. The forces of globalisation will bring about several impacts. These impact can produce both benefit and problems.

The economic impact of globalisation can bring about important benefit to the world. With globalisation, it brings about greater amount of trade and industrial development. This would help to create employment opportunities thereby reduce problems caused by unemployment. Many countries can also enjoy increased in their income levels. As countries generate more revenue, the money collected can be channelled to improvement in education, health, defence, housing and transportation for the people in the country. The standard of living for the people would improve. In this heighten competitive world, countries would work to remain competitive in this global world. In the process of improving its competitiveness, the people would also get to enjoy the improvements made in the country.

Apart from producing economic impact,globalisation will also bring about social impact which can also bring about benefit to the world. With increase in globalisation, people become more aware of different cultures. Through the different media, one can learn about the history, culture and way of life of people around the world Globalisation creates opportunities for the world to interact. This helped to create opportunity for greater understanding, appreciation and integration of the different cultures in the world. In the long run, it would helped to encourage world peace where people around the world will see beyond their differences. Therefore the social impact of globalisation can also bring about benefit to the world.

Apart these two impacts, globalisation can also bring about environmental impact. Due to globalisation brought about an increase in environmental degradation. However, due to increase in globalisation has also helped to increase a global awareness of environmental management
More countries are looking at seeking alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal energy to provide for the energy it needed. In this was teh environmental impact of globalisation can also benefit the world.

Utimately, it is difficult to seperate the benefit in to economic, socail and environmentl impact. Globalisation will bring important benefit to the world.

What Is Globalization?

This is an interesting essay on globalisation. Not for the faint hearted. But of you can understand this essay you are on your way to an A1 for English and of course Combined Humanities

What Is Globalization?

Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology.

This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.

Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages.

Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new phase in its economic development.

Since 1950, for example, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion.

Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper.”

This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment.

Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.

Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.



Globalization is deeply controversial, however.

Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people.

Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.

To find the right balance between benefits and costs associated with globalization, citizens of all nations need to understand how globalization works and the policy choices facing them and their societies.

Globalization101.org tries to provide an accurate analysis of the issues and controversies regarding globalization, especially to high-school and college students, without the slogans or ideological biases generally found in discussions of the topics. We welcome you to our website.

http://www.globalization101.org/What_is_Globalization.html


After reading this article, and refering to chapter 2 book four of your text book, how far do you agree that the main force that has made globalization possible has been imporvement in the transportation ? Explain your answer.


Hint on how to write the essay.

Three factors for globalisation.
Explain how improvement in transportation lead to globalization.
Explain how TNC (trade, government policy)lead to globalization.
Explain how technology lead to globalization.

Explain why you agree or disagree with the given statement.
If you agree, then you must say why transportation is the main force and the other two are not.

If you disagree, then you must explain why transportation is not the main force of globalization and why the other two are.