Transformations  in
Business & Economics

On Polish Economy in the Globalisation Age

JEL classification: Y20.

Contemporary globalisation processes bring about significant economic, social, political and cultural changes in individual countries. Globalisation eliminates the borders for new technologies, information revolution and flow of capital of any kind (behaviour patterns and systems of values), and as such it transforms the historical priorities of economising. In this era it is knowledge, in its broad sense that becomes the major determinant of socio-economic growth. As a result, the industrial economy (and age) is replaced by a new economy defined at present as a knowledge-based economy. The literature on the subject does not provide an unambiguous definition of the knowledge-based economy nor does it define the term “globalisation”.

According to the OECD, the term “knowledge-based economy” is used to describe “trends in advanced economies towards greater dependence on knowledge, information and high skill levels, and the increasing need for ready access to all of these by the business and public sectors”. Globalisation, on the other hand, is defined as an “increasing internationalisation of markets for goods and services, the means of production, financial systems, competition, corporations, technology and industries. Amongst other things this gives rise to increased mobility of capital, faster propagation of technological innovations and an increasing interdependency and uniformity of national markets”. In practice, the relationships between individual national markets accompanied by the elimination of all the borders in the knowledge diffusion process create a so-called global market, which directly affects (in both positive and negative ways) all the national economies. The effects of globalisation arouse much controversy since globalisation, crossing the civilisation barriers of today’s world, entails both opportunities and threats related to the relationships between individual countries and societies.

For developed economies, globalisation is an opportunity to maintain or even accelerate their economic growth. For economies in transition and developing countries, on the other hand, it is an opportunity to eliminate the delays in economic growth thus contributing to their better competitive performance in the global market. Globalisation may also offer socio-economic benefits for each society.

Fundamental aspects of globalisation, such as a free flow of human capital (labour force), unlimited access to a variety of goods and recent ICT developments, scientific discoveries, and diffusion of cultural patterns, offer potential opportunities for improvements in the standard of living all over the world. But globalisation poses also a huge threat to both individual countries and the world as a whole. The most important threats include:

• an increasing distance between developed (rich) economies and poor countries,
• social exclusion,
• malnutrition and famine,
• degradation of natural environment,
• depletion of natural resources and energy,
• limitations to consumer’s choices,
• demographic problems,
• labour problems related to automatisation and informatisation, and
• dependence of economic processes (economic growth) in a country on the phenomena taking place beyond its boundaries.

As far as the latter is concerned, the recent global crisis initiated in 2008 by the US financial crisis may be a good example. Regardless of their negative consequences (and their scale), however, it seems hardly probable that the globalisation processes should disappear in the nearest future. As long as there is no alternative for globalisation, each country (including Poland) can follow only one path to become an important actor in the global market – seize the opportunities this market offers and face actively the challenges posed by a knowledge-based economy – a foundation of globalisation.