**2. The road to globalization and the new competitive (dis)equilibria for firms**

#### **2.1 Introduction**

To treat the strategic problems of firms, it is maybe opportune to start by pointing out some basic differences between internationalization and globalization. The former was dominant from early twentieth century until the end of its '70ies, but the changes that occurred in the early '80ies produced a completely new type of phenomena, later on called—and not by a chance—*globalization*.

Undoubtedly, globalization changed the nature of competition as it was known before, when the number of international players was limited to firms possessing since decades, capital, knowledge, and the international culture to behave that way. Today, this number has gradually become larger and larger, a widespread one in every market and many (most?) industries of the world.

The main factors making globalization dominate since the '80s on are well-known ones: i) deregulation on one side and ii) the impact of new information and communication technology, the latter one maybe stronger than the former. Their interaction deeply changed the nature of markets and competition as well as the strategic behavior of companies, but also deeply influenced countries concerning international trade agreements, FDI, company law, that is, economic policies in one world [9–12].

*Our Globalization Era among Success, Obstacles and Doubts DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105545*

Deregulation enabled on one side companies to work more freely, especially as regards capital movements, international investments, mergers, and acquisitions, while information and communication technology on the other played a key role in accelerating global business transactions and deals, as they still do every day in a deeper way [13, 14].

Once transformed from international to global, competition showed largely new patterns of behavior, not to say completely renewed ones. Today, international players are in fact (and in particular they feel) more free than ever at every level (trade in goods and services, transfer of knowledge and technology, and FDI—Foreign direct investments and divestments), the latter ones representing one of the central nerves of restructuring global competition.
