This article builds a theoretical framework to help explain governance patterns in global value chains It draws on three streams of literature ‐ transaction costs economics, production networks, and technological capability and firm-level learning ‐ to identify three variables that play a large role in determining how global value chains are governed and change These are: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) the ability to codify transactions, and (3) the capabilities in the supply-base The theory generates five types of global value chain governance ‐ hierarchy, captive, relational, modular, and market ‐ which range from high to low levels of explicit coordination and power asymmetry The article highlights the dynamic and overlapping nature of global value chain governance through four brief industry case studies: bicycles, apparel, horticulture and electronics

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The governance of global value chains

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

The Rise of the Creative Class

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

This paper sets out to explore contexts for entrepreneurship, illustrating how a contextualized view of entrepreneurship contributes to our understanding of the phenomenon. There is growing recognition in entrepreneurship research that economic behavior can be better understood within its historical, temporal, institutional, spatial, and social contexts, as these contexts provide individuals with opportunities and set boundaries for their actions. Context can be an asset and a liability for the nature and extent of entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship can also impact contexts. The paper argues that context is important for understanding when, how, and why entrepreneurship happens and who becomes involved. Exploring the multiplicity of contexts and their impact on entrepreneurship, it identifies challenges researchers face in contextualizing entrepreneurship theory and offers possible ways forward.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/j_1540-6520_2010_00427_x_wml.pdf?abstractid=1784106&mirid=2

Contextualizing Entrepreneurship—Conceptual Challenges and Ways Forward:

This article outlines a framework for the analysis of economic integration and its relation to the asymmetries of economic and social development. Consciously breaking with state-centric forms of social science, it argues for a research agenda that is more adequate to the exigencies and consequences of globalization than has traditionally been the case in 'development studies'. Drawing on earlier attempts to analyse the cross-border activities of firms, their spatial configurations and developmental consequences, the article moves beyond these by proposing the framework of the 'global production network' (GPN). It explores the conceptual elements involved in this framework in some detail and then turns to sketch a stylized example of a GPN. The article concludes with a brief indication of the benefits that could be delivered by research informed by GPN analysis.

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Global production networks and the analysis of economic development

Understanding and conceptualizing the complexities of the contemporary global economy is a challenging but vitally important task. In this article, we critically evaluate the potential of one interpretive framework—the global production networks (GPN) perspective—for analysing the global economy and its impacts on territorial development. After situating the approach in relation to other cognate chain/network approaches, the article proceeds to review and evaluate a number of underdeveloped areas that need to be understood and incorporated more fully if the framework is to deliver on its early potential. The article concludes with a consideration of the key research issues facing work in this area.

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Global production networks: realizing the potential

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to ‘hold down’ the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms’ production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between ‘globalizing’ processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the ‘strategic coupling’ of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.

/pdf/globalizing-regional-development-a-global-production-1rml2at4eu.pdf

‘Globalizing’ regional development: a global production networks perspective

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

The concept of embeddedness has gained much prominence in economic geography over the last decade, as much work has been done on the social and organizational foundations of economic activities and regional development. Unlike the original conceptualizations, however, embeddedness is mostly conceived of as a ‘spatial’ concept related to the local and regional levels of analysis. By revisiting the early literature on embeddedness in particular the seminal work of Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter and critically engaging with what I will call an ‘overterritorialized’ concept, a different view on the fundamental categories of embeddedness is proposed. This reconceptualization then is illustrated using the poststructuralist metaphor of a rhizome to interpret the notion of embeddedness and its applicability to different geographical scales.

Martin Hess

Papers

Global production networks and the analysis of economic development

Global production networks: realizing the potential

‘Globalizing’ regional development: a global production networks perspective

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

'Spatial' Relationships? Towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness