EVOLUTION OF GLOBAL CORPORATIONS CORPORATION:A corporation is a legal entity formed to conduct business.

It is separate from shareholders and employees and subject to a unique set of corporate laws. In many ways relegating multinational corporations obsolete, a global corporation is a group or network of independent entrepreneurs with no official headquarters and highly globalized ways of conducting business and internal affairs. GLOBAL CORPORATIONS: In a global corporation the parent company treats each national contingent as part of an integrated market. This means that many divisions exist within the global corporation that acts as autonomous units when conducting business in their specific regions. Today we know that corporations, for good or bad, are major influences on our lives. For example, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations while only 49 are countries, based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs. In this era of globalization, marginalized people are becoming especially angry at the motives of multinational corporations, and corporate-led globalization is being met with increasing protest and resistance. How did corporations ever get such power in the first place? In 2000 the IMF identified four basic aspects of globalization: 1. Trade and transactions: Developing countries increased their share of world trade, from 19 percent in 1971 to 29 percent in 1999. But there is great variation among the major regions. For instance, the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) of Asia prospered, while African countries as a whole performed poorly. The makeup of a country's exports are an important indicator for success. Manufactured goods exports soared, dominated by developed countries and NIEs. Commodity exports, such as food and raw materials were often produced by developing countries: commodities' share of total exports declined over the period.

2. Capital and investment movements: Private capital flows to developing countries soared during the 1990s, replacing "aid" or development assistance which fell significantly after the early 1980s. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) became the most important category. Both portfolio investment and bank credit rose but they have been more volatile, falling sharply in the wake of the financial crisis of the late 1990s. 3. Migration and movement of people: In the period between 1965-90, the proportion of the labor forces migrating approximately doubled. Most migration occurred between developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The flow of migrants to advanced economic countries was claimed to provide a means through which global wages converge. They noted the potential for skills to be transferred back to developing countries as wages in those countries rise. 4. Dissemination of knowledge (and technology): Information and technology exchange is an integral aspect of globalization. Technological innovations (or technological transfer) benefit most the developing and Least Developing countries (LDCs), as for example the advent of mobile phones.[15] HISTORY OF GLOBALISATION: Perhaps the most extreme proponent of a deep historical origin for globalization was Andre Gunder Frank, an economist associated with dependency theory. Frank argued that a form of globalization has been in existence since the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley Civilization in the third millennium B.C.[2] Critics of this idea contend that it rests upon an over-broad definition of globalization. Thomas L. Friedman divides the history of globalization into three periods: Globalization 1 (14921800), Globalization 2 (18002000) and Globalization (2000present). He states that Globalization 1 involved the globalization of countries, Globalization 2 involved the globalization of companies and Globalization 3 involves the globalization of individuals. An early form of globalized economics and culture, known as archaic globalization, existed during the Hellenistic Age, when commercialized urban centers were focused around the axis of Greek culture over a wide range that stretched from India to Spain, with such cities as Alexandria, Athens,

and Antioch at its center. Trade was widespread during that period, and it is the first time the idea of a cosmopolitan culture (from Greek "Cosmopolis", meaning "world city") emerged. Others have perceived an early form of globalization in the trade links between the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire, and the Han Dynasty. The increasing articulation of commercial links between these powers inspired the development of the Silk Road, which started in western China, reached the boundaries of the Parthian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome. With 300 Greek ships a year sailing between the Greco-Roman world and India, the annual trade may have reached 300,000 tons. The Islamic Golden Age was also an important early stage of globalization, when Jewish and Muslim traders and explorers established a sustained economy across the Old World resulting in a globalization of crops, trade, knowledge and technology. Globally significant crops such as sugar and cotton became widely cultivated across the Muslim world in this period, while the necessity of learning Arabic and completing the Hajj created a cosmopolitan culture. The advent of the Mongol Empire, though destabilizing to the commercial centers of the Middle East and China, greatly facilitated travel along the Silk Road. This permitted travelers and missionaries such as Marco Polo to journey successfully (and profitably) from one end of Eurasia to the other. The Pax Mongolica of the thirteenth century had several other notable globalizing effects. It witnessed the creation of the first international postal service, as well as the rapid transmission of epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague across the newly unified regions of Central Asia.[7] These pre-modern phases of global or hemispheric exchange are sometimes known as archaic globalization. Up to the sixteenth century, however, even the largest systems of international exchange were limited to the Old World. EXAMPLE OF GLOBALISATION:MCDONALDS-A HISTORY The business began in 1940, with a restaurant opened by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. Their introduction of the "Speedee Service System" in 1948 furthered the principles of the modern fast-food restaurant that the White Castle hamburger chain had already put into practice more than two decades earlier. The original mascot of McDonald's was a man with a chef's hat on top of a hamburger shaped head whose name was "Speedee."

Speedee was eventually replaced with Ronald McDonald by 1967 when the company first filed a U.S. trademark on a clown shaped man having puffed out costume legs. McDonald's first filed for a U.S. trademark on the name "McDonald's" on May 4, 1961, with the description "Drive-In Restaurant Services," which continues to be renewed through the end of December 2009. In the same year, on September 13, 1961, the company filed a logo trademark on an overlapping, double arched "M" symbol. The overlapping double arched "M" symbol logo was temporarily disfavored by September 6, 1962, when a trademark was filed for a single arch, shaped over many of the early McDonald's restaurants in the early years. Although the "Golden Arches" appeared in various forms, the present form as a letter "M" did not appear until November 18, 1968, when the company applied for a U.S. trademark. GLOBAL MCDONALDS TODAY: The present corporation dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois, on April 15, 1955, the ninth McDonald's restaurant overall. Kroc later purchased the McDonald brothers' equity in the company and led its worldwide expansion, and the company became listed on the public stock markets in 1965. Kroc was also noted for aggressive business practices, compelling the McDonald brothers to leave the fast food industry. The McDonald brothers and Kroc feuded over control of the business, as documented in both Kroc's autobiography and in the McDonald brothers' autobiography. The site of the McDonald brothers' original restaurant is now a monument. Facts and figures By 1993, McDonald's had sold more than 100 billion hamburgers. The onceubiquitous restaurant signs that boasted the number of sales, such as this one in Harlem, were left at "99 billion" as there was only space for two digits. McDonald's restaurants are found in 119 countries and territories around the world and serve 58 million customers each day. McDonald's operates over 31,000 restaurants worldwide, employing more than 1.5 million people. The company also operates other restaurant brands, such as Piles Caf.

Some observers have suggested that the company should be given credit for increasing the standard of service in markets that it enters. A group of anthropologists in a study entitled Golden Arches East looked at the impact McDonald's had on East Asia, and Hong Kong in particular. When it opened in Hong Kong in 1975, McDonald's was the first restaurant to consistently offer clean restrooms, driving customers to demand the same of other restaurants and institutions. McDonald's have recently taken to partnering up with Sinopec, the second largest oil company in the People's Republic of China, as it begins to take advantage of the country's growing use of personal vehicles by opening numerous drive-thru restaurants McDonald's has opened a McDonald's restaurant and McCaf on the underground premises of the French fine artsmuseum, the Louvre.