As the level of globalization increases, business risk, uncertainty and change, has forced firms to consider adopting sustainable development strategies to survive competitively. Adopting technological innovations has, without doubt, open the door for old and new firms to thrive, however, this transformation process has occurred as a result not solely of businesses adopting new technologies but, shifting their business culture.
Behind the globalization of business activity there is not only a business transformation but an entrepreneurial cultural reinvention. This process has been accelerated by globalization, as the survival of businesses has become linked to how they achieve sustainable development through the management of greater social, cultural, political and economic interdependence.
It is important to critically discuss how globalization has changed the business management of enterprises and how sustainable development strategies have become essential for firms to compete and survive in a global and post-global market context.
As firms reach full capacity at a local, regional and national level, they seek to maintain their growth potential expanding internationally. This internationalization process has created not only greater market opportunities but new threats which firms have faced changing the way they now manage business. Competing in larger and more complex international markets has forced multinational firm to use economies of scale to position and adjust their products locally. However, as competition internationally, intensifies, and technology becomes more available, international firm become global acting as if the entire world was their market.
This has led firms to implement a global marketing strategy where the world is seen as a single market with a standardised global product for a single global consumer. The implementation of this new business management strategy has led globalised businesses to go beyond using economies of scale to using co-marketing. By seeking integration rather than direct competition with other firms, co-marketing has transformed the way firms compete with each other. As cooperation becomes the new “business management paradigm”, sustainable development has come to shape the way enterprises see themselves as socio-cultural units more than productive ones.
