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Salman Sakir's article is relevant to the issues raised in Friedman's book The World is Flat in which Friedman in a sense laments over the impact of globalization upon the developed countries, the USA for him, because the developing countries like Brazil and Asian countries like China and India have a massive work labour influence upon the West. Sakir focuses on both the positive and negative aspects of globalization, one of the five forces in Gratton's The Shift and a form of global economy as discussed by Stanford in his Economics for Everyone. Because of low wage and easy availability of experts/labour in the developing countries, foreign investments have been attracted by those Asian and developing countries where the jobs have been created for the locals. On the other hand, the citizens of the developed counters of the West and the North America have consumed the products from the developing countries in a reasonably lower price. Poverty ratio has been decreased in the developing countries which have also been integrated by the phenomenon of globalization. These are positive impacts. But in the developed countries, manufacturing industries have been moved out. so unemployment rate is ever increasing, Sakir highlights these aspects of globalization in this article.

This article by Charles Fishman echoes more of what Friedman calls 'Multiple Identity Disorder' in a flattening world. We as individuals are trying to sort out "the tensions among our identities as consumers, employees, citizens, taxpayers, and shareholders." This article pulls the covers off of Wal-Mart, revealing some of the business partnerships they have had with companies like Vlasic, Lovable, Levi Strauss, and MasterLock- and how those companies have lost huge profits, and in the case of Vlasic, gone bankrupt because of their partnership with Wal-Mart. But, says Fishman, for suppliers, "the only thing worse than doing business with Wal-Mart may be not doing business with Wal-Mart". In a flattened world where one company has so much power, suppliers have few options if they want to stay afloat. Wal-Mart is taking its business to foreign companies at an accelerated rate. And as consumers with lower incomes due to the off-shoring of jobs, we also feel that we have little choice: we have to buy the cheapest brand. Seems that the Flattened world has also flattened individual choice.