ETHICAL SOCIETAL ISSUE Knowledge and Globalization In the Middle Ages, Venice considered its expertise in making glassware not only a business trade secret but also a state secret. Divulging glassmaking knowledge to anyone outside the republic of Venice was punishable by death, because much of the state's economy depended on excluding other states and countries from such knowledge. Venice, like other states in that era, would never "offshore" any of the work to another country. Nowadays, matters are completely different. What was expertise a year ago has become routine work this year and may become automated next year. At that point, the expertise value in the product will have diminished, and to make a profit the organization that once had a comparative advantage in producing the product will have to use the least expensive labor available. Then, the business will offshore manufacturing to a factory in a country where labor is cheaper. The industry in the original country will lose jobs. Information technology helps create knowledge but also expedites the turning of knowledge into routine, automated processes that can be carried out elsewhere. IT also expedites the transfer of knowledge from countries that created it to countries that can quickly use it. Software used to be developed almost exclusively in the United States. Much of the software that the world uses now has been developed in Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, and Russia. A growing amount of the software developed for U.S. companies is created in India and China. The programmers' expertise is similar, but the wages earned by programmers in those two countries are a fraction of what American programmers would be paid for the same work. This is a pivotal element in what is called globalization-moving from national economies to a global economy. Is this bad for countries such as the United States and good only for countries such as India and China? BI and KM software is developed mainly in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. However, these systems are sold anywhere and can help companies in other countries compete with companies in those "developed" countries. This puts developing countries in position to gain knowledge much faster than before and compete better. Now, the competition is not only in the manufacturing and service areas but also in R&D. In the United States, some observers view the issue in the following light America used to be a world leader in manufacturing, but other countries now have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, and their workers have taken the jobs that American laborers used to perform. For some time Americans had an advantage in providing services, but many of these services are now provided over the Internet and telephone lines by workers in other countries, so the service sector's advantage has diminished. The United States is still ahead in terms of innovation and creation of know-how, they say, but we are starting to see this advantage slipping away, too. And when other countries beat us in creation of knowledge, they ask, what's left with which to compete? Should governments take measures-legal or otherwise that protect their economic advantages? Should they penalize companies that offshore manufacturing jobs? Should they forbid the sale of know-how to other countries? Should they adopt the Venetian model? Or, should we look at the world as one large economy where each worker and each organization should compete for a piece of the pie regardless of national borders, so that consumers everywhere can enjoy products of the highest quality for the lowest price possible?