scholarly journals Marks & Spencer and the Decline of the British Textile Industry, 1950–2000

2016 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Toms ◽  
Qi Zhang
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Textile Industry ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Apparel Manufacturing ◽  
Production Chain ◽  
Partnership Model ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Face

From the end of World War II, British clothing retailers—most notably, Marks & Spencer (M&S)—increasingly dominated the domestic textile industry, to some extent arresting its decline. This article uses financial and archival evidence to examine the distribution of costs and benefits in the M&S vertical network. It shows that these benefits became less tangible for textile firms from around 1985, in the context of lower-cost overseas competition. We chart the visible and invisible evolution of network management, demonstrating that retailer-producer collaboration evolved from a bilateral vertical partnership model to a hybrid version that retained partnerships with leading suppliers and an emphasis on domestic sourcing, but also facilitated offshore production. Since 1945, staple domestic industries in Western economies have been replaced with global production networks. In the United Kingdom, the cotton textile industry, and then the textile industry in general, declined in the face of increasing overseas competition. Survival strategies were based on restructuring and concentration. During a period of rapid transformation after 1960, cotton was absorbed into vertically structured textile conglomerates. Still, the decline continued, and as protection was phased out, fabric and apparel manufacturing faced similar threats, although rates of decline and strategic response depended on relative position in the vertical production chain. An alternative survival strategy based on vertical partnerships was led by retailers, particularly the dominant clothing retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S).

scholarly journals Global Production Networks and Audiovisual Industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Bilyana Tomova
Keyword(s):  
Textile Industry ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks

The aim of the article is to present the concept of global production networks (GPNs) through the prism of the audiovisual industry (focus - film industry). The theory of global production networks is relatively new and is associated mainly with classical industries such as automotive, textile industry and others. Its application to the field of cultural industries goes beyond the economic dimensions and emphasizes the cultural and socio-political aspects of global markets. Global production networks are the framework in which the main trends in the audiovisual industry over the last decade will be interpreted, as well as the main stages and market players in the film industry.

Charles de Gaulle and European Community

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
David Ramiro Troitino ◽  
Tanel Kerikmae ◽  
Olga Shumilo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
European Community ◽  
World War ◽  
Charles De Gaulle ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Post War ◽  
De Gaulle

This article highlights the role of Charles de Gaulle in the history of united post-war Europe, his approaches to the internal and foreign French policies, also vetoing the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Community. The authors describe the emergence of De Gaulle as a politician, his uneasy relationship with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, also the roots of developing a “nationalistic” approach to regional policy after the end of the war. The article also considers the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter - CAP), one of Charles de Gaulle’s biggest achievements in foreign policy, and the reasons for the Fouchet Plan defeat.

A Substantive Theory of Transnational Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Standards ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Substantive Theory ◽  
Private Authority ◽  
Differential Performance

Social scientists have theorized the rise of transnational private authority, but knowledge about its consequences remains sparse and fragmented. This chapter builds from a critique of “empty spaces” imagery in several leading paradigms to a new theory of transnational governance. Rules and assurances are increasingly flowing through global production networks, but these flows are channeled and reconfigured by domestic governance in a variety of ways. Abstracting from the case studies in this book, a series of theoretical propositions specify the likely outcomes of private regulation, the influence of domestic governance, the special significance of territory and rights, and several ways in which the content of rules shapes their implementation. As such, this theory proposes an explanation for differences across places, fields, and issues, including the differential performance of labor and environmental standards.

Transnational Standards and Empty Spaces

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Bartley
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Private Regulation ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Making Sense

A vast new world of transnational standards has emerged, covering issues from human rights to sustainability to food safety. This chapter develops a framework for making sense of this new global order. It is tempting to imagine that global rules can and should bypass corrupt, incapacitated, or illegitimate governments in poor and middle-income countries. This assumption must be rejected if we want to understand the consequences of global rules and the prospects for improvement. After showing how a combination of social movements, global production networks, and neoliberalism gave rise to transnational private regulation, the chapter builds the foundations for the comparative approach of this book. The book’s comparative analysis of land and labor in Indonesia and China sheds light on two key fields of transnational governance, their implications in democratic and authoritarian settings, and the problems of governing the global economy through private regulation.

Exploring political rupture through Jewish children’s diaries: Kindertransport children in France, 1938-1942

2021 ◽  
pp. 161189442110177
Author(s):  
Laura Hobson Faure
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Jewish Children ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Children's Testimony

This article focuses on France as a refuge for unaccompanied Central European Jewish children on the eve of World War II. Contrary to the United Kingdom, which accepted 10,000 Jewish children through Kindertransport, only 350-450 children entered France. This article utilizes children’s diaries and organizational records to question how children perceived and recorded their displacement and resettlement in France, a country that would soon be at war, and then occupied, by Nazi Germany. By questioning how these events filtered into and transformed children’s lives, I argue that the shifting political environment led to profound transformations in these children’s daily lives long before their very existence was threatened by Nazi–Vichy deportation measures. Most children were cared for in collective children’s homes in the Paris region in which left-oriented educators established children’s republics. Yet the outbreak of war triggered a series of events in the homes that led to changes in pedagogical methods and new arrivals (and thus new conflicts). The Nazi occupation of France led to the children’s displacement to the Southern zone, their dispersal into new homes, and the reconfiguration of their networks. This analysis of children’s contemporaneous sources and the conditions under which they were produced places new emphasis on the epistemology of Kindertransport sources and thus contributes to larger theoretical discussions in Holocaust and Childhood studies on children’s testimony.

The Invisible Networks of Global Production: Re-Imagining the Global Value Chain in Legal Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Anna Beckers
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Global Value Chain ◽  
Commodity Chain ◽  
Production Network ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Legal Research ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Global Production Network

AbstractReviewing the burgeoning legal scholarship on global value chains to delineate the legal image of the global value chain and then comparing this legal image with images on global production in neighbouring social sciences research, in particular the Global Commodity Chain/Global Value Chain and the Global Production Network approach, this article reveals that legal research strongly aligns with the value chain image, but takes less account of the production-centric network image. The article then outlines a research agenda for legal research that departs from a network perspective on global production. To that end, it proposes that re-imagining the law in a world of global production networks requires a focus in legal research on the legal construction of global production and its infrastructure and a stronger contextualization of governance obligations and liability rules in the light of the issue-specific legal rules that apply to said infrastructure.

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