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Framework of Uncertainty and Disruption: Globalization and the return of Geopolitics

Introduction

The world nowadays has experienced the worst ever situation never expected or seen to happen during this Era. All the 195 independent countries in the world, plus the entire worldwide population, of 7.9 billion as per the (UNPD, United Nations Population Division, 2019), has agreed, that we were not ready to face such an awkward experience. We can conclude that after all these events, every human will expect to feel uncertainty closer than ever.

Most of it will be revealed as the way in which we can expect to handle disruptions in every way of our daily lives, such as delays in goods, difficulties in transportation, cargoes, and flights, and access to travel, among others.

It is possible that the traditional ways in how to manage globalization, will not remain the same. The potential events that can happen, high level of risks never considered before, has brought to reality how to be prepared for unpredictable disruptions events, just like the M.V. EVERGIVEN at the Suez Canal, (Lawrence, 2021).

Governments and the private sector represented in end customers, retailers, wholesalers, and fabrics have understood how fragile the supply chain is, and how important are geopolitics, and in any event, they must be prepared and ready to keep moving forward with their activities. Without globalization activities such as the global supply chain working appropriately, there is no food or goods to arrive safely at any location at any time. Global supply chain disruptions concerns have become an important threat to focusing on short-term and longer-term strategy and risk management, for all the stakeholders around the world, and especially for the governments and organizations strategic planning to rethink.

Globalization disruptions have arrived to live among us and can have severe negative impacts on worldwide trading such as shortage of products, labor, and uncertainty in capital markets and the economy.

The good news is that can be mitigated by a numbered of responses planned by the decision-makers within the governments and organizations, that lead and supports all the initiatives in the disruption management process, such as disruption recognition, disruption diagnosis, response development, and response implementation, (Bode, 2016).

Problem Statement

ASEAN countries are providing a framework for global trade within the next coming decades, based on strengthening relations for economic interaction on the most potential fields of Economic Value Added (EVA) for the supply chain such as energy, technology, innovation, pharma goods, commodities, among others.

Looking for alternative routes to deal with logistics, by reducing the time and cost involved, will provide light within the tunnel, which can be always a reduction of risk in the logistics and global trade, which is providing benefits, customer satisfaction, and generating value for all the stakeholders.

This research will point to different alternatives for the development and economic growth of globalization and supply trade activities looking at disruptive parameters and unexpected events such as the black swans like the pandemic.

Objectives

The study´s overall objective is to analyze what strategies ASEAN countries are using to succeed during the pandemic and what type of analysis they have made to adjust their geopolitical decisions. The target recipients are weaker countries considered as third party’s actors, involved in the globalization and supply chains of powerful countries, with strong port activities and navigational routes, logistics hubs, warehouses, and organizations that needed to be aware of constant changes because of disruptions. The implications are for decision-makers (governmental officials) pursuing their value generation and looking to incorporate new meaningful changing strategies of planning and implementation, to create a virtuous cycle of improvement and assessment, (Mithas, 2015), to optimize their economy and trading efforts globally.

Conclusion

With the increase of economic value added (EVA), all the stakeholders involved in the globalization and economic interchanges of trade and commerce with a resilient supply chain is a route to consider for the benefit of the world, and final consumers. If we find the right combination of decisions and global interactions, strengthening relations with good neighbors, playing fair, and making policies for the well-being of the world, then according to (Brenes and Camacho, 2016), the nations will make their supply chain, globalization decisions and processes more resilient in strategies of growth, regional expansion, and global competition, without weakening their competitiveness as countries than their main purpose are to bring security and prosperity for their citizens. Then, our research question will have an answer based on the analysis coming from all the characteristics overseen in aims detail such as mentioned, like leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus and operation focus. The results of these outcome answers might give the government’s decision-makers and organizations, very good feedback on what to adjust and/or incorporate to successfully achieve the goals proposed by each of them. It is extremely important to know the risks and factors that bring extreme losses and operational weakness, so they can be improved and corrected in a proper time, by their leaders and teams. The hypothesis seeks to show how ASEAN´s decision to be non-discriminative for all the global commerce, it’s been considered a success story for openness to the global economy, which can be seen as an example to the other nations for better interaction in trading opportunities worldwide. ASEAN has always focused on wanting to enhance its commitment to globalization, using its inclusive economic trading policies and bringing more prosperity and better opportunities for its country members.

Samuel John Ferreira de Souza Gonzalez
Author is a Diplomat from the Embassy of Panama to India, and is a Doctorate Scholar from Swiss School of Business Management, Switzerland, Geneve, and a Master Candidate in Diplomacy and International Affairs, Nuclear Disarmament and International Affairs from UNITAR (United Nations) and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
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