Abstract 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.
<div class="abstract" data-abstract-type="normal"> Global industrialization is the result of an integrated system of production and trade. Open international trade has encourage...
This empirical study suggests that Japanese competitive advantage in complex-product industries is at least partly due to differences in value chain governance and interfirm ass...
Over the past twenty years the marketing of African fresh vegetables in the United Kingdom has become dominated by large retailers that have adopted competitive strategies based...
Transaction cost economics (TCE), and more specifically the version of TCE that has been developed by Oliver Williamson (1975, 1985, 1993b), has become an increasingly important...
The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the...
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions