How does a manufacturing company in Baltimore thrive selling steel around the world? Titan Steel Corporation keeps manufacturing jobs in the U.S. by continually adapting to shifting suppliers and customers as macro trends and exchange-rate shifts alter the global competitive landscape.

Global trade is heavily dependent on the world's fleet of cargo ships, which carry everything from oil to iPads. Shipping operators in turn depend on specialized financing to stay in business. Scott Lewallen '89, global head of shipping finance for SEB Merchant Bank, describes how this little-noticed industry keeps globalization sailing ahead.

Global commerce would be impossible without the movement of information — contracts, arrangements, plans, blueprints. Before the digital revolution transformed many of these things into bits and pixels, there was a postal revolution that improved the speed of information flow around the world.

With consumers becoming increasingly concerned about how their goods are produced, international companies are faced with managing conditions — as well as productivity — all along their supply chains. In many cases, that means finding ways to oversee factories in China.

You can find Cosmopolitan on news­stands in Korea, India, Russia, Greece, Brazil, China, and 50 other countries. How did the idea of the “fun, fearless female” go global — and pull in profits for Hearst?

One problem that has come up throughout this issue is how to enforce fair rules throughout a global system when most enforcement mechanisms are nation-based. Given how powerful the forces of globalization are, do we need a new global regulator?

Oil pumped from the Niger Delta is loaded on supertankers and shipped into the global market, accounting for 3% of world production and generating substantial revenues for the Nigerian government. What has this connection to the world economy done for Nigeria?

The lives of people in distant countries are increasingly being linked, through commerce, communications technology, or culture. Researchers are trying to parse out how the gains from globalization are touching the lives of the poorest citizens in developing countries.

The global economy is in a severe slowdown. GDPs are dropping, the rosters of the unemployed are getting longer, and there’s no obvious resolution in sight. Will the effects of this economic crisis — and of government responses — threaten the system of commercial relationships that has developed over the last 30 years?

In 2005, Lenovo, China’s largest PC maker, acquired IBM’s worldwide PC business. The company inherited nearly $10 billion in annual sales, but faced the challenge of introducing itself to millions of consumers.

American pop music blaring from speakers in North Africa. Indian novels being read on the subway in New York City. Has cultural production become as widely dispersed as the supply chain?

Can globalization thrive without a strong foundation of moral and social values? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair argues that all human systems rely on certain fundamental values to function well over the long term, and that applying this understanding to globalization could produce tangible benefits.

Depending on where you stand, globalization can mean factory jobs in Thailand or cheap goods at the mall; a world of choices or the homogenization of pop culture. Scholars from the fields of economics, sociology, and political science discuss the growing web of connections transforming commerce and culture around the world.

Nigeria’s film industry, often called Nollywood, produced 1,687 feature films in 2007. That’s more movies than were made in India and the United States combined. In a country that has suffered from decades of corruption and a failure to translate significant oil wealth into a higher standard of living for the majority of people, this homegrown enterprise has brought Nigeria a new sort of attention in recent years.

Iceland may have been a forerunner of 21st century financial trends. First it profited from increasing integration with the global financial system. Then ties to the world economy helped pull it into fiscal ruin. What can an island with less than .005% of the world’s population teach us about globalization?