GLOBALIZATION AND CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Abstract

Globalization is the study of dramatic global changes and their consequences in different fields of economy, technology and communications during the past two to three decades. Similar to other industry sectors or professional practices, globalization has enabled the construction industry to take advantage of cross-border markets and benefit from the opportunities that the globalized economy has provided. Advances in transportation, data sharing and communication have given construction professionals and the labor force unprecedented access to markets that were previously insulated. As the political borders have turned to be increasingly irrelevant and the national economies have become more interdependent, the socio-cultural differences are hence accentuated and further exposed due to historically-existing dissimilarities in societal cultures and business norms. In this paper, the main goal is to understand the globalization and its implications for the world economy specifically focusing on the construction industry. This paper studies the impacts of globalization in construction engineering and management profession and further investigates on the opportunities and threats that a globalized economy and more-synchronized business practices will bring for industry and how Construction Engineering educators shall successfully address those unprecedented issues in teaching Construction Engineering Management courses to the next generation of the industry leaders.