On the Cutting Edge of Globalization page 38
Rosenau et. al.
We proceeded to test each of these six sub-samples against six hypothesized
behaviors that characterize an individual who is on the cutting edge of globalization.
Since our survey asked respondents about their travel patterns, we tested the six sub-
samples against two hypotheses about the movements of those on the cutting edge of
globalization: (1) Those who are “cutting edgers” will travel abroad on business more
often than will those who are not involved in globalization; and (2) those who are on the
cutting edge of globalization will vacation abroad more often than those who are not. To
account for the possible distorting effects of outliers in the above two hypotheses, we
developed a third that measures the ratio of a respondent’s international to domestic
travel: (3) Those who are Cutting-Edgers will undertake international travel more than
domestic travel than will Other Leaders (that is to say, those on the cutting edge of
globalization are more likely to travel across sovereign borders more often than they
travel within them). This is simply the ratio of the number of times a respondent has
traveled internationally in the last two years to the number of times the respondent has
traveled domestically in the last two years.
26
Because the survey provides data for both
business travel and personal travel, furthermore, this third hypothesis allows us to test
two separate but related questions: do the members of the proposed sub-sample travel
internationally more frequently for business than they travel domestically? And do the
members of the proposed sub-sample travel internationally more frequently for personal
reasons than they travel domestically?
27
The three indices offer three additional hypotheses against which to test our six
proposed ways to identify those respondents on the cutting edge of globalization. We
hypothesize that cutting-edgers (4) will score higher on the involvement index; (5) will
score significantly differently (either positive or negative) on the orientations index; and
(6) will score higher on the interconnectivity index. We should note that it is tautological
to test the top quartile of the involvement index against the index itself; for this reason we
conduct only five hypothesis tests on the top quartile of the involvement index.
We present the results of these tests in Table 37. To test each of the six samples
against the six hypotheses, we started by conducting an F-test to compare the variances
26
These ratios themselves offer a quick glimpse at the travel patterns of our respondents, since a
value greater than 1 indicates the respondent has traveled internationally more than domestically. Forty-
two respondents had a business-travel ratio greater than one, while 75 respondents had a personal-travel
ratio greater than one.
27
One possible criticism of these three hypotheses is that an individual’s travel patterns—or other
behaviors—may not say anything meaningful about his or her involvement in the processes of
globalization. For example, the business executives we sampled, one might argue, are more likely to
delegate to subordinates many of the more tedious or onerous activities we asked about in our survey, such
as international travel. Fortunately, our survey allowed us to test this hypothesis using the respondents’
answers to our question “Do you consider yourself (a) among the leaders of your organization or
profession; (b) close to the top; (c) in the middle range; or (d) toward the bottom?” Using respondents’
professional self-identification to conduct t-tests, we found that respondents who identified themselves at
the top of their profession score significantly higher on all three indices, while those who identify
themselves as being toward the bottom of their profession score significantly lower on all three indices.
Assuming that our indices are valid measures, we believe that the presumption that Cutting-Edgers will
travel more than other respondents is a reasonable one.
Convention