Dr Serena Masino gives keynote lecture at Company of Entrepreneurs event

The lecture, titled ‘Globalisation: Opportunities and Threats’, explored how enterprising businesses maximise global opportunities and mitigate global threats. It examined working conditions and labour standards and tried to cast some new light on the current understanding of winners and losers in today’s low-income countries around the world.

The Company of Entrepreneurs is a membership and charitable organisation formed of men and women connected with the City of London who have invested their own time and financial resources into setting up successful businesses.

The Raleigh Lectures are designed to inspire and develop entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the UK's next generation of innovators. This year's lecture builds on the success of events held in 2018 and 2019, which looked at Sir Walter Raleigh's role in early British exploration and trade, as well as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Giving the conclusion to her lecture on globalisation, Dr Masino said: “Globalisation creates definite opportunities - this is not up for question - but at the same time, it is also likely to widen income, skill and regional inequalities on a case-by-case basis, depending on the situation. Some stand to gain – the winners – but there will be inevitable losers.”

She continued: “There is a key role here for national governments: they need to be empowered to be able to provide the safety net for those losers. At the same time, transnational business needs to be held accountable because they have disproportionate market power.”

Dr Masino’s current field of research is in the political economy of development, and her research agenda is divided into two strands: one looks at issues of global health policy, while another focuses on globalisation and labour in transnational production settings.

Watch the full lecture on the Company of Entrepreneurs’ YouTube channel.