The Dynamics of the Global Market: A Knowledge Acquisition and Application Approach Nelson Sizwe Madonsela a , Paulin Mbecke b , Charles Mbohwa c Abstract—Globalization has created vast economic opportunities for nations and companies around the world to access the global market. Consequently, nations and companies specifically within the manufacturing sector and service industries are doing business around a borderless globe. Nations are focusing on the global market to strengthen their economic growth and investing their resources in different infrastructural aspects to facilitate rapid economic growth. There has been a constant change within the global market, making nations and companies struggle to keep up with the global market emerging trends. This paper provides insight into the dynamics of the global market and the key elements contributing to these constant changes. It seeks to alert nations and companies to the need to re‐focus in order to sustain competitive advantage in the global economic market. It sensitizes nations and companies to the need to re‐focus on key elements such as knowledge acquisition and application in order to sustain competitive advantage in the global economic market. The findings of this paper suggest that sustaining competitiveness at the business level requires knowledge acquisition and application, complementary to which is further education, technical skills, re‐ training and technological development. At the national level this knowledge acquisition and application balances the effective strategic leadership, attracting foreign investment and reaching global networks. Index Terms—advanced technology, global competitiveness, global market, knowledge acquisition, strategic leadership I. INTRODUCTION HE global marketplace has become the main focus for sustainability in business and strengthening of economic growth. Globalization brought an era of a “boundary-less world”, Manuscript received 06 March 2015; revised 23 March 2015 a Nelson Sizwe Madonsela is a Masters student at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (FEBE). He works for the Department of Justice and Correctional Services as an IT trainer and the Department of Higher Education as a Part-time Lecturer. Tel: +27721345265, Email: nel_madon@yahoo.com b Prof Paulin Mbecke is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Public Administration & Management, School of Economic & Management Sciences at the University of South Africa and a visiting Associate Professor in the Faculties of Political, Administrative and Social Sciences (Department of Community Development) and Economic and Management Sciences at the University du Moyen Lualaba (UML) in the DRC. Email: pmbecke@gmail.com c Prof Charles Mbohwa is the Vice-Dean: Postgraduate Studies, Research and Innovation at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (FEBE). He serves as a Professor in the Department of Quality and Operations Management, which forms part of FEBE’s School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Email: cmbohwa@uj.ac.za whereby companies are operating in multinational countries and taking advantage of the benefits of the global marketplace [11, p.42). It is noted that there has been a transformation within organisations in that today we have borderless organizations: to name but few, Wal-Mart, IBM and Coca-Cola. However, [3, p.52] claims that “there are only few companies from developing countries which have managed to create and sell globally under their own brand names”. Thus it is clear that entering the global market requires both companies and the nation to understand the dynamics of the global market to effectively adapt to its environment, especially considering the fact that the global market is constantly changing and unpredictable. The argument of this paper is that companies and nations in the developing world lack understanding of the dynamics of the global market. There is a failure on the part of these nations to facilitate and create enabling environments for their companies to gain and sustain competitive advantage in the global marketplace. This is attributed to the lack of knowledge acquisition and application by companies and nations in relation to the development of leadership strategy, infrastructure, transportation systems, and policies. Knowledge acquisition and application is the systematic process of collecting data and transforming it into information for decision making. It is noted that some of these elements have a direct impact on a company’s attitude with regard to entering the global market. Meanwhile, other companies still have their challenges in terms of knowledge acquisition and application. This contention is supported by [11], through their notion that some companies are static in their traditional ways of doing business, whereas other companies successfully gain competitive advantage within the global market. It can be perceived that due to insufficient knowledge some companies are still facing a challenge when deciding whether or not to enter the global market. This paper provides insight into the dynamics of the global market and key elements attributing to the constant changing global environment. II. THE AIM OF THE STUDY It sensitizes nations and companies of their need to re-focus on key elements such as knowledge acquisition and application in order to sustain competitive advantage in the global economic market. The main argument of this paper is that companies and nations in the developing world strive to keep up with the uncertain environments of the global market but overlook the attributing factors of the dynamics of the global market. Notwithstanding, this study emphasizes the quest for understanding the dynamics of the T Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2015 Vol I WCE 2015, July 1 - 3, 2015, London, U.K. ISBN: 978-988-19253-4-3 ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online) WCE 2015