Like any other system, globalisation must be sold to its eventual users.

The protest marches which often accompany gatherings of supranational organisations, such as the IMF and the WTO, have widespread and deep support. It is obvious from the way the protests are organised, that they are not the work of a few fringe groups.

Yet the resistance to globalisation can be seen even in the behaviour of the major European states. In Lisbon in 2000, the EU resolved to create a state-of-the-art economy by 2010 but the prevailing culture in most EU states is generally anti-market: Witness the resistance by various EU states at various times to have their major "national" corporations merged into global-sized European ones. National, anti-global, anti-market, anti-competitive, birth-till-death-protection sentiments abound.

If globalisation does not win converts, if it is merely taken on sufferance, then one can count the years until it is rejected, with states putting up protectionist, xenophobic walls. The cradle has been rocked a number of times: recently with steel, now with oil. The end of globalisation would be a big step back for humanity.

If it is to win hearts, and not merely economic minds, globalisation must become more responsive to broad human needs and conditions, including human diversity. By definition, globalisation must be integrationist. It must be flexible enough to adapt itself to different cultures and regions while retaining the market efficiencies, standardisation, and property rights which fuel its strength.

One other feature stands out: If it is to survive, globalisation must take into account size, whether the size of states, or of firms and organisations. Often, promulgators of globalisation assume that it is about bigness, about huge organisations, firms and countries. But globalisation, to survive, must cater for human diversity and size is important. There are various reasons for this.

First, by the very nature of human and geographical diversity, big and small are often intermixed. Even on philosophical grounds, therefore, globalisation, to make sense, cannot exclude smallness.

Let me give a few examples of this intermixing. A country might be geographically small but with a big population, while another might be big but with a small population - this was a salient point in recent EU negotiations for accession of the new members and the constitution. A country might have a big population or a big area but have relatively small firms and other organisations, perhaps due to its stage of economic development.

Small firms, taken together, usually have a big economic impact: micro, small and medium-sized enterprises represent 99 per cent of all enterprises in the EU and provide around 65 million jobs. Finally, a big part of global wealth is ultimately owned by a relatively small number of families.

Therefore, given these structural and conceptual multi-scale aspects of the human condition, one cannot doubt that globalisation must also be inherently multi-scale.

In drawing up new regulations, for example, supranational organisations should be especially careful to carry out impact assessments on how these would affect states or organisations of different sizes. One would have expected this to be obvious. Actually, it is not, and is rarely done. Awareness for this has to be developed and small states and small organisations must press for this fundamental right.

Rules made for big states and organisations sit oddly, and wastefully, with small states and organisations. Small entities are simpler and there is often much less physical and communication distance between the leadership at the top and people at the bottom and between people in different parts of the entity. There is also a much more informal channel of communication - the famous "grapevine". People mix more thoroughly and a person is said to be "known".

In small entities, people feel they belong more. Leaders have a greater opportunity to own, figuratively or actually, the entity concerned, be it a state or organisation. Furthermore, small size does away with many problems of supervision and control requirements since an owner is more likely to mind the business.

Small firms tend to be more creative because creative people need freedom and they can more easily clear their lines and interact in a small organisation than in a big one. Thus the phrase "small is beautiful", in view of the advantages of small businesses and other organisations.

Indeed, it is also in the interest of big entities to have small entities regulated and treated differently, because this would allow a more efficient economic division of labour, making it possible for entities to specialise in what each does best.

It is because of this division of labour, for example, that outsourcing and sub-contracting takes place. Many small firms perform tasks which bigger firms find uneconomical. If rules do away with small firms, or if rules push up the costs, it would be to the detriment of the common good. The same goes with big and small states. Rules should be sensitive to size to avoid destroying inherent advantages.

There is another reason why promulgators of globalisation should be sensitive to size. If rules are designed for big entities without regard to small ones, these same rules would disadvantage the small entities and be unfair.

We see this happening in lots of cases: International rules made for big banks having to be absorbed by small ones even when they are nearly irrelevant and merely add to the costs, EU accession countries having to absorb myriad rules made for much larger and economically more mature states and organisations.

Unfortunately, globalisation as a process is not as sensitive to multi-scale issues as it should, probably because it has been spearheaded by big organisations representing big business in big countries. There is nothing wrong with this and, indeed, big business and globalisation created massive wealth for producers and consumers alike.

But globalisation must evolve to a second stage, to integrate within it more of humanity's diversity, especially size. Malta, with its representation in the EU and other international institutions, can find in globalisation's development a new international role. Malta is blessed as one of the more developed of the small states, occupies a potentially important geographic position, is wide open to trade and has demonstrated its willingness to adopt international regulations. It is in an enviable position to communicate the need for "small globalisation" and to understand the interests involved on both sides. Ultimately, it is also in Malta's own interest to bring to the fore the new awareness of size which globalisation needs to assimilate in order to continue creating wealth.

Paul V. Azzopardi is managing director of Azzopardi Investment Management Limited (www.azzopardi.com) which is licensed by the MFSA to provide investment services, including stockbroking. This article is only meant to provide information, which the writer believes to be accurate at the time of writing, and is not intended to give investment advice and its contents should not be construed as such. The value of securities, and the currencies in which they are denominated, may go down as well as up. Mr Azzopardi and/or the company may have an interest in securities mentioned. Readers are requested to seek professional financial advice tailored to their own personal circumstances.