Search

The ambition of integrating national economies into global value chains (GVCs) has become a staple of agricultural and industrial policies of the world’s least-developed countries. Working with Malawi as a representative case of such national policies of value chains for development (VCDs), we investigate how the national ambition of GVC integration is experienced at the level of local communities. The analytical juxtaposition of policy documents and community experiences demonstrates an unmet need for GVC governance that mitigates the potential negative impact that large-scale production for global markets may have on local livelihoods and facilitates local communities’ bottom-up participation in GVCs. On this basis, we introduce the concept of community governance as a supplement to the notions of private and public governance. We argue that the community level must be included in the GVC governance mix in order to ensure livelihood upgrading of all stakeholders. Further, we suggest that moving beyond economic and social upgrading of direct participants will release the potential of the GVC approach to promote inclusive development based on principles of empowerment and self-determination. Introducing community governance in theory and practice, we conclude, is key to the success of VCDs.

This article utilises a GVC analytic framework to analyse the wind energy value chain in South Africa and its impact on localisation of goods and services. Its theoretical contribution highlights governance as dependent on system integration dynamics, with lead firms operating as system integrators. The empirical analysis focuses on the interplay between energy and industrial policy showing how policy failure, driven by coal-based vested interests, disrupted system integration and undermined the renewable energy programme. The failure to ensure continuity and predictability of the auction bidding process within energy policy cascaded down the wind energy chain negatively impacting industrial policy attempts to localise domestic and foreign enterprises. This also derived from the South African government failing to prioritise, develop, and embed renewable energy as a green economy strategy within its industrial policy framework. We conclude with the following lessons: (a) GVC dynamics and lead firms cannot be ignored if localisation is to take root; (b) green strategies should be mainstreamed within industrial policy; (c) localisation starts with lead firms encouraging follower sourcing of first tier suppliers; (d) localising domestic value-added services is just as important as developing manufacturing enterprises.

In this article, we take stock of the nature and scope of global value chain (GVC)-oriented policies. Building on the papers that have been accepted to the special collection, we categorize GVC-oriented policies according to four different policy objectives: participation, value capture, inclusiveness, and resiliency. We compare and contrast the social and economic rationales for state intervention across the different types of GVC-oriented policies and discuss the instruments and actions at the disposal of governments to reach their policy objectives. The trifecta of tasks, linkages, and firms explains whether and how GVC-oriented policies differ from traditional public policies.

Firms’ reshoring strategies have recently sparked academic and policy interest due to their contribution to rebalancing advanced economies. In line with the ongoing debate and by examining the journey of a company based in the West Midlands region of the UK, this work illustrates the adoption of a manufacturing reshoring strategy in response to a changing competitive environment. Further, by utilizing a mixture of primary and secondary data, this work not only shows how regional dynamics are pivotal for attracting manufacturing reshoring but also how regional characteristics can change the narrative on reshoring from a national to a regional focus. By doing so, this work demonstrates how regional implementation of industrial policies can facilitate a multiplier effect in the value of the region by increasing the attractiveness of hosting a manufacturing reshoring strategy.

As opposed to the predominant focus of global value chain (GVC) research on export-oriented contexts, this article examines the prospects for development in places where the dominant form of engagement with GVCs is import-oriented. Through the case of South Africa’s pharmaceutical industry, this analysis demonstrates the challenge for local manufacturing to compete, and the associated state policy responses, in a place which is largely plugged into GVCs as an end market rather than as a production location. As multinationals have concentrated production elsewhere, South Africa’s manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical industry has relatively declined in recent decades. Having struggled in its facilitator role, the South African state’s efforts to promote local manufacturing have turned to the producer role through a state-owned company and especially the buyer role through public procurement. Motivations for state policy in this context, however, must navigate the tension which sometimes exists between the industrial interest in local manufacturing and the consumer and health policy interest in access to medicines. The experience of South Africa’s pharmaceutical industry points to the wider challenge and consequences of import-oriented engagement with GVCs for local industrial development.

Multinational enterprises face challenges to integrate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals into their supply chains because it requires cooperation outside of their direct control. In global agrifood value networks, companies struggle to engage their suppliers in sustainability. One reason is that key intermediaries, the offtakers, have not been engaged in sustainability strategies in a way that is economically feasible, and thus fail to act as a cooperating link. We developed and applied a return on sustainability investment (ROSI) model of a more strategic supply-chain approach for food commodities (one that values partnerships over transactional relationships). We modeled the coconut supply network in the Philippines, and compared these findings to another agrifood system, Brazilian beef. Categories of benefits included: a stable and sustainable supply chain, long-term contracts, sustainable products, brand value and innovation, and reduction of corporate risk. In addition to the benefit of working with MNEs as a strategic partner, incremental benefits prioritized by stakeholders included intangibles that could generate value from cost savings, avoided costs, as well as new revenue opportunities to establish a more stable sustainable supply chain. Monetizing benefits to offtakers can help incentivize a new type of global value chain governance to a closed, more stable supply-chain configuration that can better address complex social–environmental dynamics, and foster strategic partnerships.

Disruptions in global supply chains in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have re-opened the debate on the vulnerabilities associated with production in complex international production networks. To build resilience in supply chains, several authors suggest making them shorter, more domestic, and more diversified. This paper argues that before redesigning global supply chains, one needs to identify the concrete issues faced by firms during the crisis and the policies that can solve them. It highlights that the solutions that have been proposed tend to be disconnected from the conclusions of the supply chain literature, where reshoring does not lead to resilience, and could further benefit from the insights of international business and global value chain scholars. Lastly, the paper discusses the policies that can build resilience at the firm and global levels and the narrative that could replace the current one to reshape the debate on the policy implications of COVID-19 for global supply chains.

Emerging market governments are incented to attract global value chain (GVC) activities to fuel economic growth. At the same time, in light of real and perceived workplace-related injustices within emerging markets, GVC lead firms are under pressure to improve social standard compliance within their upstream supply chain. Among the most common approaches to achieve these outcomes is to impose standards of conduct that are vetted by on-site audits. Research has shown, however, that improvement in GVC performance using this approach has been slow and sometimes leads to negative consequences, leading us to our research question: under what conditions do interventions by GVC lead firms yield significant improvements in social standards among upstream supplier workplaces? We hypothesize that a country’s institutions not only have direct effects on social upgrading but also indirectly affect the ability of third parties to bring about social compliance. Our findings, based on two longitudinal datasets, suggest that GVC lead firms must account for the unique country-level institutional pressures that either propel or hamper improvement over time in private social standard compliance among upstream suppliers. In addition, governments must develop new policy responses to target the prevailing institutional pressures that dampen social upgrading if they are to attract and retain GVC investment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic shortage in the medical supplies needed to treat the virus due to a massive surge in demand as the disease circled the globe during the first half of 2020. Prior to the crisis, there was an interdependence of trade and production for medical supplies, with advanced industrial countries like the United States and Germany specializing in the relatively high-tech medical devices sector, while low-cost production hubs such as China and Malaysia were leading producers of less technologically sophisticated personal protective equipment (PPE) products such as face masks, surgical gloves, and medical gowns. After the COVID-19 outbreak, global shortages of PPE products emerged as many affected countries imposed export controls and sought ways to boost domestic output. A case study of the face mask value chain in the United States shows misalignments between the priorities of U.S. federal government officials and the strategies of leading U.S. multinational producers of face masks, which resulted in exceptionally costly policy delays in terms of health outcomes. On balance, the U.S. shortage of N95 respirators during the COVID-19 pandemic is more a policy failure than a market failure. The global value chain framework highlights strategic options that could lead to more resilient supply chains and diversified sourcing patterns.