Love of economics has always resulted in positive changes in the last century, but time has proved that love of accepting the predictions can result in unprecedented effects. Both mentioned above are no different i.e. severance is never applicable for both these loves when it comes to the passion or in fact the human greed for making money. And the same greed has prompted multinationals to peep into any opportunity that a new market creates. Thus created the jargon, ‘Emerging markets’, in the later quarter of 20th century. The failure of socialist policies to make changes in the living standard of people and the envy that originated out of the high growth of countries following free market principles resulted in the opening up of major socialist markets to the multinationals.In no time the multinationals rushed in to grab the major pie of the mass market as 60 percent of the world population live in these Emerging countries. Along with them they brought in another mechanism to reinforce their world dominance, ‘Reinforce their status as the major soft power’ which started creating a huge cultural impact in these countries.
As we look around we cannot find a better award than Oscar, we cannot find a better language than English, we cannot find a better acceptance of restaurant chain than the acceptance of McDonalds, we cannot find a better movie than Hollywood movies, and we cannot find better music than western music. Yes, it true that they have dominated this world as the biggest soft power. Now they have the power such that if any news is communicated to the world through CNN or BBC, people believe it. The funniest thing is that people are hypnotized to believe so, even when a second thought reveals that this is not the fact. Now they have the power to enforce that what ever they have done in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq is for everyone’s goodwill when the fact remained deeply buried under. Whom we should blame for this, the people in these developing countries or the penetration of multinationals or both?
In developed countries, multinationals are backed by their foreign affairs ministry which is well aware that invasion of culture is the new mode of imperialism. At the same time we cannot ignore the benefits that these multinationals brought in through their strategy of free market and business development. Their role in wealth creation is indispensible. So we have arrived at a point where we have to decide on how we go with both these perspectives.
When we talk about cultural impacts, there is another side that helps in creating a balanced multi cultural and multi lingual society where a high cultural tolerance is observed. These corporate often have a unique working model where multi cultural and multi lingual people collaborate for the attainment of a unique goal. This often inducts a self learning of other cultures and tolerances bringing up a highly cosmopolitan society. Moreover this is more beneficial for a society like India where people tend to identify themselves based on the language they speak. But in yet another emerging market, Russia, these cultural conflicts with western world is often seen as the imposing of dominant fantasies on a failed state.
In an opposite perspective, the establishments of multinationals in these historical countries help these countries to bring up themselves as an emerging soft power by impacting the way in which these multinationals generally do business. This is evident from the western representation of doing business in Japan as ‘Doing business in Japan is easy, but only if you do it in Japanese way’. It is a general tendency in Japan that your promotions are associated with your age, if someone below your age got a promotion as your manager, it’s usual that you immediately resign. This prompted the western companies to change their strategy of hiring and adapt themselves to the Japanese culture.
As we all know that there is no reverting of the economic policies we have already put in place for the benefit of our society, but we have to decide on how to reduce its impact on the millennium old culture of most emerging markets. Moreover, the discussion about cultural impacts has to be tweaked to discuss about, learning each others culture to create a world harmony.
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