What Has a Flatter World Changed?

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a Business Management Degree I plan to take on one of two avenues. The first option would be to remain in the same field I have been working in for the last 14 years, the Aerospace Industry. In this field, I believe I have the opportunity to climb the ladder through management roles such as project supervisor, program manager, and program director. My second option would be to start up my own business. I currently don’t know what type of business I’d like to start, but I do work on ideas constantly. My end goal in this career choice would be becoming the CEO of a large company that I built, or at the same time wouldn’t mind settling for a small sustainable business of which I run.

Globalization has definitely benefited the Aerospace Industry in many ways. For one, it has allowed for most of the world’s countries the ability to add aircrafts as a form of transport for its citizens and products via airports. Many of these countries have also been able to add aircraft capabilities to their military forces. Globalization has allowed countries access to technical plans, procedures, resources, and skilled labor needed to build all types of aircraft. For the most part, demand is what has helped professionals in my career field, as the demand drives sales, and thus creating jobs for those skilled in the trade. In the current climate we find that globalization has now concentrated on economics and thus opened the gates to competition, the copying of proprietary information, and the desire to find cheaper labor and material to build.

While globalization has helped the market expand, it has also hurt the stronghold the U.S. had on the market to begin with. Aerospace companies have been able to outsource tons of labor and materials for cheaper now more than ever. This has hurt the working class American. At one point in time, Americans handled the entire process of designing, building, testing, and selling aircrafts to the free world. But in the last few decades, we have seen the trend of outsourcing grow exponentially. A large majority of parts, subassemblies, and sections of planes and helicopters are now being built by the lowest bidder. I believe that eventually, globalization could prove even more hurtful to the American working class. Most of the industry might end up moving all operations into foreign countries. As a result, domestic companies would become nothing more than dealerships for aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. The only thing keeping that from happening at the moment is that the majority of the skilled labor force is found in the U.S. As soon as other countries are able to build a skilled workforce, major projects will definitely start to move abroad. One example of this could even be found with a company that I used to work for 10 years ago, Boeing. Boeing partnered up with a manufacturer in Italy, as they contracted them to build the entire shell of the new 787 commercial airliners. Italy promised they had a skilled workforce, but actually took normal people off the street and had them learn along the way. What ended happening was that the product delivered to Boeing in the U.S. was subpar. Boeing discovered that many of the builds were built poorly and improperly. The company was forced to hire a large group of workers to re-do and inspect a majority of the work Italy had done at a huge loss of time and money. It was definitely a large setback.

In an even flatter world of the future, I will need to be an even more skilled and knowledgeable individual. I will need to build skills that are not easily duplicated for the future as I had done with the skills I have today that are now being copied and taught all over the world. One skill to build will be the ability to manage a workforce. Managing will always be something that takes a certain personality and skillset to accomplish. Another viable skill, now and for the future, will be the ability to sell. People who are able to sell have a good understanding of consumer behavior as well as good emotional intelligence. I plan to build on those skills by either starting a product or service business in my off time, and by receiving a secondary degree in marketing. One other thing, believe it or not, is it might be a smart idea to learn other languages of the world in order to gain an advantage for job opportunities of the future in this industry. In the future, languages like Mandarin and Portuguese might be very important in the aviation industry as enterprises from Brazil and China begin to gain stronghold on the industry. So whether it means learning to speak a different language, or just being able to express one self clearly, communication skills should help open doors in the Aerospace Industry as more and more companies begin to merge and collaborate on new ventures.