Globalization is the worldwide technological, economic and cultural change brought about by expanding facilities for communications and interdependency between isolate cultures. Dramatically increased international trade and finance have established a medium wherin deeper cultural exchanges have taken place, greatly increasing the impact of global issues at the local scale.

In economic context, the term refers to the effects of trade, particularly trade liberalization (or the «free trade»). More broadly, the term refers to the overall integration, and resulting increase in interdependence among global actors.

It is useful to distinguish economic, political, and cultural aspects of globalization, although all three aspects are closely intertwined. The other key aspect of globalization is changes in technology, particularly in transport and communications, which are creating a global village.

«Globalization» can mean:

Globalism that contrasts with economic nationalism and protectionism.

Complex connectivity, where more and more places are being connected in new ways. Arjun Appadurai identified five types of global connectivity:

– Ethnoscapes: movements of people (tourists, immigrants, refugees, and businessmen).

– Financescapes: global flows of money, often driven by interconnected currency markets, stock exchanges, and commodity markets.

– Ideoscapes: the global spread of ideas and political ideologies.

– Mediascapes: the global distribution of media images.

– Technoscapes: the movement of technologies around the globe.

Cultural globalization means attempts to erode the national cultures of Europe, and subsume them into a global culture whose members will be much easier to manipulate through mass media and controlled governments.

Economic globalization refers to four different flows across boundaries: flows of goods/services, people, capital, and technology. The IMF defines globalization as «the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, freer international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology».

In the field of management, globalization is a marketing or strategy term that refers to the emergence of international markets for consumer goods characterized by similar customer needs and tastes enabling, for example, selling the same cars or soaps or foods with similar ad campaigns to people in different cultures. This usage is contrasted with internationalization which describes the activities of multinational companies dealing across borders in either financial instruments, commodities, or products that are extensively tailored to local markets.

Many use the term «corporate globalization» or «global corporatization» to highlight the impact of MNCs and the use of legal and financial means to circumvent local laws and standards, in order to leverage the labor and services of unequally-developed regions against each other.

The spread of capitalism from developed to developing nations.