While their thinking is global, actions and commitment are local. If anything, the global economy offers better opportunities to small and medium-sized companies than they had in the past. They can exploit a growing tertiary sector, satisfying niche markets and responding to the outsourcing requirements of larger companies. Benefiting from improved communications and the computer, companies can operate with low overheads. Large parts of the traditional office infastructure can be replaced by a PC, a fax, an answering machine, and e-mail capability.
Smaller companies can operate on a shoe-string and still be efficient.
The realities of business practice are clearly ahead of the globalization debate. Things are happening while some governments are still talking, or worse looking for ways to escape the inevitable. Since globalization is creating an upward spiral of wealth and jobs, the aim must be to encourage governments to stimulate the process. For a country's economy to keep pace with globalization, it is no longer sufficient merely to have its own companies invest abroad. Liberalization, deregulation and the modernization of institutions and procedures that are relevant to business will all be necessary if national economies are to be compatible with the global economy.