Introduction

The aim of the book is an introduction to the Fundamentals of Global Business. Book comes in several forms. First of all, it is a physical book that will be distributed in bookstores and libraries. It is also is going to be an e-book available in e-stores. And finally, it is a website where individual parts of the book, texts, presentations presenting individual chapters of the book with graphs, illustrations and maps are available.

This book is intended for the worldwide academic community – university students and lecturers. The World Bank estimates that the number of students in the world will reach 220 million in the third decade of the 21st century. Number has doubled in two decades since 2000. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of students has doubled in second decade of 21 Century. As the world transitions from an industrial to a knowledge economy, the number of students is likely to increase, which should increase human well-being and ensure world peace.

As the number of students increases, the need for academic staff, as well as infrastructure and available materials for teaching, inevitably increases.

For a long time, high-quality university education was inaccessible or unaffordable for everyone who wanted it. The experience of COVID-19 has taught humanity and encouraged the wider use of remote communication technologies. Virtual workplaces and virtual studies have become the new normal. Although this caused great challenges, at the same time it made it possible for humanity to exchange knowledge even faster and spread university education around the world.

This book is a way for students to have an accessible and affordable lecture series on global business. Also, the book is very convenient for teachers, as it makes it possible to use the material of the lecture year both in the classroom and virtually. Due to the increasing number of students in South America, this book is published not only in English but also in Spanish.

Fundamentals of Global Business is intended for first-year students, where they are introduced to the history of global business and international economic theories in the first part. In the second part, four main ways of organizing global business are presented and detailed to students – (1) international trade, export-based development, (2) international franchises and intellectual property-based businesses, (3) vertical and horizontal alliances, and (4) foreign direct investment. In the third part, students are introduced to the diversity of business environments – economic, political, legal, environmental, cultural, technological. The fourth part presents the diversity of global business operations, international logistics and organizational structures in the world. The whole book is divided into sections between which we can easily navigate in the content.

Any person born and raised in a certain environment looks at the world through the environment, attitudes, and value systems of that country. Very often, when a person falls into another country or another continent, he notices that everything there is different from what he is used to. What was considered the norm becomes unusual, and what was unusual becomes normal. The purpose of the book is to show diversity from a bird’s eye view and prepare the student to understand diversity and be able to adapt. The book presents differences by looking at them as a phenomenon, but without moralising or judging one or another culture or approach.

The book is very useful for economics and business students as well as students of other specialties. For economics and business students, this book is a systematic introduction to business studies, it makes sense in the first or second year of undergraduate studies. Later, specific disciplines – economics, management, marketing, logistics – can be deepened in later courses by learning from narrowly specialised books and professors. The book is also highly recommended for non-business and non-economics students as general introduction to global business. In the knowledge economy, it is important not only to teach a person chemistry, pharmacy, engineering, physics etc., but also to give an understanding of how that knowledge can be applied in business across the world. The author strongly recommends that the global business course be included in as many study programs as possible outside of economics and business, as it is a necessary understanding of how the business world is structured and what are the challenges and differences in global business.