DOUG Elix has a big IBM message for anyone concerned about the way technology and globalisation are turning multinational corporations into globally integrated enterprises that don't give a toss about national boundaries or local interests.

"The first thing to understand is you can't fight it," says Elix, the Australian who is in charge of IBM's massive sales and distribution operations in 170 countries.

"Protectionism - denying it and fighting it - is doomed to failure. So you must adapt to it and accept it and say, 'What does it mean for us?' That is a role for both companies and governments in the future."

Elix is singing from the same song book as IBM boss Sam Palmisano, who has made quite a splash lately with strategically placed letters and articles warning about the dangers inherent in businesses maintaining colonial approaches to their foreign operations.

According to Palmisano, this is feeding the growing anti-globalisation backlash and may result in the election of protectionist governments hostile to the interests of business.

"People may ultimately elect governments that impose strict regulations on trade or labour, perhaps of a highly protectionist sort," Palmisano wrote in Foreign Affairs Quarterly. "Worse, they might gravitate toward more extreme nationalism, xenophobia and anti-modernism."

Put simply, IBM wants big business to kill off the protectionist threat by adopting global integration strategies en masse. This would set in stone the fact of globalisation and force governments to collaborate on creating a permanent culture of innovation that generates the smart jobs needed to maintain living standards. In this equation, intellectual capital rules while the bad old days of multinationals exploiting workers and nations give way to a new era where the globally integrated corporation seeks to "open new possibilities for business growth and social progress".

Palmisano's offensive followed IBM's announcement this month that it would spend $US6 billion ($8.1 billion) in 2006 on further expansion of its software, hardware, services and research and development businesses in India, a country where it already has 43,000 employees.

The huge investment almost trebles the sum IBM has already spent in India over the past three years and dwarfs the $US3.9 billion combined investment of Microsoft, Intel and Cisco Systems in India in 2005.

Palmisano says India and other emerging economies are becoming an increasingly important part of IBM's global success and the company is "not going to miss this opportunity".

IBM's plan was announced amid week-long company hoopla in Bangalore, a southern Indian city that was an important colonial administration centre during the days of that earliest of multinational incarnations, the British East India Co.

Elix says Bangalore was an "exciting week", though it must have seemed surreal when Palmisano was cheered wildly by 10,000 of IBM's Bangalore employees after his arrival on stage with Indian President Abdul Kalam was counted down on a giant clock.

But in the job-sensitive West, investments of $US6 billion in India inspire fears, not cheers, so a week after Bangalore, IBM began a bold political sell.

Instead of platitudes aimed at traditional spheres of operation, IBM has publicly committed itself to a globally integrated business model and spoken about how it wants to exploit the internet to locate production, research, service delivery and management jobs around the world, depending on the demand and the best availability of skills and price.

The business model recognises no national boundary, as opposed to traditional multinationals that were designed around the nationalism and protectionism of 20th century capitalism with its various tariffs, subsidies and exchange controls.

In this world, Elix says, innovation is the key and he suggests that India, which has a reputation as a production haven because of cheap labor costs, is becoming increasingly well placed to win the smart jobs that traditionally have been regarded as the province of the West.

"The quality of people being turned out by Indian universities, the work discipline and the adherence to quality standards to produce quality works is very high," Elix says.

"It comes down to innovation. You really have to keep on innovating and if the more developed countries don't innovate, then employment will shift to more logical locations. Unfortunately you see that happening now in countries like France and Germany where it's creating a lot of political tension.

"But if a country steps up to it, and the company steps up to it, they can together carve out areas where, through innovation, they create employment for people and continue to have a good standard of living."

But Elix says this can no longer be at the expense of well-educated and hard-working people in other countries (like India) who have the ability to join a globalised workforce.

He says IBM, which as the world's largest seller of IT services has a vast amount of work capable of being relocated via the internet, has been extremely frank about this with its employees.

"We talk about what is going on, why is this happening, and the fact that we are going to take advantage of it," he says.

"We talk about what countries in the EU and what countries like the US and Australia need to do to have an advantage so that certain work can be done there, as opposed to, say, India or China.

"Globally integrating the enterprise means you disregard boundaries and conduct work using skill and resource wherever you find it. That concept is now expanding because of the level playing field created by the web.

"But it means there is a large responsibility on both private companies and governments to tell people what all this is going to mean and what people in countries like the US and Australia need to do to maintain a good standard of living."

Elix believes such an historic transition of the corporation will have wide political implications, though the political models that might emerge remain very hard to predict.

"But I do think it's quite natural that if activities globalise, then the idea of parochial governments might one day change too," he says.