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French Caldwell, Gartner Analyst |
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Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Globalization
Thursday, 27 March 2003
The ever-encroaching impact of IT on all aspects of society and in all regions of the world offers grand opportunities and benefits to businesses, but it also raises significant risks.
This is what Gartner analyst French Caldwell calls the "dark side of globalization." Speaking on Wednesday at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in San Diego, Mr. Caldwell highlighted five issues that, he says, are creating a tsunami of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the connected economy:
1. Trust and ethics in business
2. The pace of globalization
3. Looming regulation of cyberspace
4. Terrorism and cybercrime
5. Anti-globalization
In the wake of corporate scandals such as the Enron debacle, trust and confidence about business remains shaky, Mr. Caldwell said. Restoring trust requires enterprises to make their business dealings more honest and transparent.
"Companies do not have ethics," he said. Rather, ethics are endowed in the people in the company. "People in an organization always take their cue from the top. Ethics requires work and due diligence."
The rapid pace of globalization affects economic, cultural, governmental, business and communication issues. In particular, IT depends on the mobility of skilled knowledge workers. Finding talented IT workers is becoming a challenge for enterprises, Mr. Caldwell said.
As the Internet becomes an essential global medium for commercial and consumer use, its growing influence spurs laws and regulations by governments eager to tame the wild west-like nature of cyberspace. Taxation, intellectual property rights, the privacy of confidential information and the loss of online connections are issues that attract public policy interests.
Mr. Caldwell argues that some businesses will soon face lawsuits by customers who willl claim that their business interests have been significantly impaired by loss of Internet service. He urged attendees to adopt an early-warning capability to track such developing public policy initiatives.
Worries over terrorism and cyberattacks goaded by anti-Western groups and criminals will likely impel a small spending boom in IT security equipment and services in 2005, Mr. Caldwell predicts. However, he also foresees a growing backlash over homeland security concerns as citizens, businesses and governments clash over privacy versus safety.
Technology is also being used as an ad hoc political organizing tool. This phenomenon most famously occurred in Seattle, Washington in 1999, when protests at the World Trade Organization summit blossomed out of online and wireless communities.
This type of virtual community - coordinated action organized around one central event without top-down, chain-of-command structure - is labeled the "Network Army" by Gartner analyst Richard Hunter in his book, World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Mr. Caldwell suggested that such virtual communities might become competitors to traditional government institutions in a budding "e-democracy" movement.
To cope with these uncertainties, Mr. Caldwell recommends that enterprises take the following action steps:
Make your enterprise open and transparent in its business dealings, and use that stance as a competitive edge
Plan for more virtualization of work
Establish a "weather bureau" to track technology-related public policies that might affect your business
Institute solid IT security practices to protect your IT infrastructure and intellectual assets
Link e-government programs to economic development activities
Michael Gomez
Gartner Staff
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