Journal of Economic Geography - current issue

Introduction: global production networks--debates and challenges

Coe, N. M., Dicken, P., Hess, M. — 2008-04-18

Global production networks: realizing the potential

Coe, N. M., Dicken, P., Hess, M. — 2008-04-18

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.

Value chains, networks and clusters: reframing the global automotive industry

Sturgeon, T., Van Biesebroeck, J., Gereffi, G. — 2008-04-18

In this article, we apply global value chain (GVC) analysis to recent trends in the global automotive industry, with special attention paid to the case of North America. We use the three main elements of the GVC framework—firm-level chain governance, power and institutions—to highlight some of the defining characteristics of this important industry. First, national political institutions create pressure for local content, which drives production close to end markets, where it tends to be organized nationally or regionally. Second, in terms of GVC governance, rising product complexity combined with low codifiability and a paucity of industry-level standards has driven buyer–supplier linkages toward the relational form, a governance mode that is more compatible with Japanese than American supplier relations. The outsourcing boom of the 1990s exacerbated this situation. As work shifted to the supply base, lead firms and suppliers were forced to develop relational linkages to support the exchange of complex uncodified information and tacit knowledge. Finally, the small number of hugely powerful lead firms that drive the automotive industry helps to explain why it has been so difficult to develop and set the industry-level standards that could underpin a more loosely articulated spatial architecture. This case study underlines the need for an open, scalable approach to the study of global industries.

Global standards, global governance and the organization of global value chains

Nadvi, K. — 2008-04-18

Compliance with international standards is now a sine qua non for entry into globalized production networks. Developing country firms and farms are confronted by an array of distinct product and process standards that they must meet. This has heightened the competitive challenges they face. Non-compliance can result in exclusion from profitable markets. This article uses the recent case of Nike's termination of sourcing of soccer balls from its lead supplier in Pakistan as a lens to analyse the relationship between standards and governance. The article addresses first the global governance implications associated with how standards are being shaped and implemented. Second, it considers how global standards affect the governance of value chain ties. Finally, in terms of questions for further research, it suggests the need to explore the relationship between standards and ‘intra-firm’ governance, in particular to assess outcomes for those engaged within the chains—namely local firms and their workers, and the social contexts in which global standards are imposed from the outside.

Global production networks, ethical campaigning, and the embeddedness of responsible governance

Hughes, A., Wrigley, N., Buttle, M. — 2008-04-18

This article presents a theoretically informed consideration of the role of ethical campaigning in shaping organizational practices of power and authority in global production networks (GPNs). It does so through a focus on responsibility, and the ways in which ethical consumption is challenging the organization of global networks of supply. The arguments draw upon and develop two geographical approaches to understanding transnational trade, namely the GPN framework and the study of commodity knowledge. First, understandings of ethical consumption and circuitous commodity knowledge are mobilized to capture the practices of knowledge translation through which ethics are woven into particular forms of supply network coordination. Second, through a comparative case study of UK and US corporate retailers’ ethical trading programmes, notions of embeddedness advanced by the GPN framework are used and further developed to illuminate how the mobilization of ethics into different forms of network coordination involves organizational processes influenced by spaces of retail and consumption. It is argued from this that the influences of retail and consumption should be more fully incorporated into analytical frameworks for understanding GPNs.

Labour agency and union positionalities in global production networks

Cumbers, A., Nativel, C., Routledge, P. — 2008-04-18

The development of a global production networks (GPN) perspective in economic geography has brought valuable insights into the social and political relations between regional, state and corporate actors in understanding processes of value capture in the production of commodities. However, to date, little has been said about labour as an active constituent of the global economy, rather than the passive victim of restructuring processes. In this article, we seek to rectify this situation by, first, theorizing the agency of labour in GPNs and the continuing role of class struggle in shaping the global economy, and second, exploring the positionality of unions within this framework. Through a case study of ICEM (the International Chemical, Energy, Mining and General Workers Federation), we show how union strategies evolve through contested socio–spatial relations both within unions themselves and with other social actors. Promoting transnational labour rights and improved employment conditions at the global scale is an aspiration of most union actors, but this is inevitably compromised by different subject positions in relation to broader processes of capital accumulation.

Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development

Bridge, G. — 2008-04-18

This article explores the opportunities a GPN approach provides for understanding the network configurations and regional development impacts associated with extractive industries. The article elaborates two core claims: (i) that the application of the GPN analytical framework provides a way to make progress in a stalled policy debate regarding the linkages between resource extraction and socio-economic development (popularly known as the ‘resource curse thesis’); and (ii) that the encounter between GPN and a natural resource-based sector introduces distinctive issues—associated with the materiality and territoriality of extractive commodities—that, to date, GPN has not considered fully. The article examines the global production network for oil as an empirical case of how extractive industries can provide (limited) opportunities for socio-economic development.

Cultural political economy meets global production networks: a productive meeting?

Hudson, R. — 2008-04-18

In this article, I explore some of the implications of pursuing a cultural political economy (CPE) approach to the analysis of global production networks (GPNs). This raises three sets of issues: the current state of knowledge about GPNs; the current state of knowledge about CPE and the current state of relationships between analyses of GPNs and CPE. GPNs can be seen as encompassing the entirety of the circuit of production and to be constituted via a variety of flows (of capital in various forms such as commodities and money, knowledge and people) between a variety of nodes, sites and spaces (of production, exchange and consumption), with varying governance arrangements, both multi-scalar (supra-national, national, regional and urban) and non-scalar networked forms of governance. As these are Global Production Networks these nodes and the flows linking them are, by definition, distributed around the globe, albeit unevenly. CPE seeks to conjoin a more thorough treatment of the semiotic to more established concepts of political economy and there has been some considerable success in this regard [for example see Jessop and Sum (2006 Beyond the Regulation Approach. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar)]. As yet, however, there has been little serious engagement with the materiality of the economy and so with the relations between the material, semiotic and political economic within CPE. A similar criticism can be made of work on GPNs. Integrating considerations of the materiality of the economy more systematically enriches a CPE perspective, while exploring common ground between CPE and GPN approaches enables these advantages to be translated into the latter and further enhance its conceptual reach.