Peter F. Drucker on Globalization

CHAPTER ONE

The Changed World Economy

THERE IS A LOT OF TALK today of the changing world economy. But—and this is the point of this chapter—the world economy is not changing. It has already changed in its foundations and in its structure, and irreversibly so in all probability.

Within the last ten or fifteen years, three fundamental changes have occurred in the very fabric of the world’s economy:

1. The primary-products economy has come “uncoupled” from the industrial economy;

2. In the industrial economy itself, production has come uncoupled from employment;

3. Capital movements rather than trade in goods and services have become the engines ...