Globalization and the 'New Enterprise'

Globalization has been identified by many experts as a new way
firms organize their activities and as the emergence of human
capital as the new stakeholder of the firm. This paper surveys
recent work which examines the role of trade integration for these
changes in corporate organization. More intense competition and the
change in the pattern of specialization following trade
liberalization make it both more likely that an organizational
equilibrium emerges in which power is delegated to lower levels of
the firms' hierarchy empowering human capital. Furthermore, trade
integration leads to waves of outsourcing and to a convergence in
corporate cultures across countries.