ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 25, 1996 TAG: 9603250108
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
FOR WESTERN Virginia, a place in the worldwide economy is no chimerical goal. The global economy is here and now.
It's not just that consumers in this region, as elsewhere in the country, buy lots of imported goods, or goods with imported parts. Our region also exports large, if largely unsung, amounts of products to other countries, and the role of exports in the local economy is growing.
Another sign of global linkage: the increasing number of Western Virginia firms earning ISO 9000 certification, as reported Sunday in this newspaper's Business section.
ISO 9000 refers to a detailed set of international standards for quality management. To become certified, a company must document its adherence to them. As of February, 146 Virginia companies had been certified, and a disproportionately high number - 36 - were in Western Virginia.
On one level, ISO 9000 certification is simply a new paperwork requirement for doing business worldwide; a number of nations and foreign-trade groups are mandating certification. In part, the growing number of certified firms in Western Virginia merely illustrates the region's growing involvement with international markets.
But ISO 9000 is more than just a paperwork chore. It also reflects a new way of doing business that is a must for enhancing one's niche in international trade. Indeed, the principles incorporated in the standards are more important than the somewhat outdated standards themselves.
These principles - team management, continuous improvement in quality, reliance on measurement, focus on customer feedback and the like - work to make companies more competitive. By becoming more productive and responsive, they can boost their presence in world markets, not to mention avoid getting slammed by international competitors.
Holding a place in the global economy doesn't necessarily entail direct sales abroad. A number of Western Virginia firms that have or are getting ISO 9000 certification don't sell overseas. But the American firms to which they do sell have overseas markets, and expect their suppliers to be ISO 9000 companies.
Moreover, the quality-management principles to which certification attests are valuable to any business that must compete to survive - which is to say, virtually any business. This applies to firms with no discernible international business whatsoever. The influence of the emerging global economy is as pervasive as it is inescapable.
And this fact should be celebrated, not deplored. Protectionists such as Pat Buchanan are right to worry about the growing inequality of income in America, but wrong to believe that the answer is to resist competitiveness induced by economic globalization.
First, "competitive" is not synonymous with "low-cost labor." A central tenet of quality management is that applying employees' skills and smarts to add value to a product, not cutting labor costs to the bone, is the route to corporate prosperity.
Second, the only way for real incomes throughout an economy to rise is for goods and services to get better, or cheaper, or a combination of both. What plagues the nation today is a distributional problem: How do you ensure that a growing pie is fairly shared? But first you have to have a growing pie - which is what the international economy is providing America and Western Virginia.
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