Global production networks and cooperation

2019 ◽  
pp. 138-154
Author(s):  
John Child ◽  
David Faulkner ◽  
Stephen Tallman ◽  
Linda Hsieh

Chapter 7 addresses the use of cooperative strategies and organizations in the development of global value-adding chains and networks. These global networks comprise not only component manufacture, but also final assembly, marketing, distribution, and even knowledge-based activities such as research and development. These activities are located in many countries and regions, both industrialized and emerging. The chapter notes that transaction cost and resource-based theories and their derivative transaction value perspective offer theoretical support for why cooperative ventures are common in the “outsourcing” that is typical of global production networks. Network concepts help to explain the structuring of global production networks and of the individual transactions that comprise these networks. The chapter also discusses the work of Gereffi and others on global value chains which is particularly informative about cooperative governance types. Modular production models provide a mechanism to structure decentralized networks.

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 1005-1016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gernot Grabher ◽  
Erwin van Tuijl

Uber and Airbnb have advanced into emblematic cases in debates in which the new digital capitalism is framed in terms of the so-called sharing economy. While this strand of inquiry has produced a wealth of insights into the workings and impacts of peer-to-peer platforms, the digital transformation of business-to-business interactions has so far attracted less attention. The present Exchange confronts this challenge by juxtaposing platform conceptions with a pre-eminent framework to conceptualize business-to-business relations: global production networks (GPN). Specifically, this Exchange addresses challenges posed by the platform approach for the GPN framework in the four dimensions: value (from owning assets to granting access), governance (from make-or-buy to employ-or-enable), management (from back-end to front-end) and labour (from jobs to gigs).


Author(s):  
Tim Bartley

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.


Author(s):  
Tim Bartley

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-117
Author(s):  
Anna Beckers

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.


Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA BEKASOVA

Abstract This article explores the networking activities of Count Nikolai Rumiantsev and Adam von Krusenstern, his close collaborator. The visionary Russian statesman and the celebrated navigator were deeply involved in northern exploration. They funded and organized a circumnavigating voyage by the brig Rurik in 1815–18, with the explicit goals of searching for a northern passage between Eurasia and North America and conducting a series of scientific investigations in the Bering Strait region. This private exploratory enterprise profoundly influenced the exchange of information and reconfigured both local and global networks of knowledge. Based on an analysis of private correspondence, printed accounts and journal articles related to the Rurik's expedition, this study sheds light on how this transnational network of actors emerged and functioned, and how it promoted a lively circulation of information about exploration in the Bering Strait region in the 1810s–1820s. I argue that a complex interplay of geopolitical and intellectual competition, with exchanges, collaborations and coordination among various actors (e.g. patrons, navigators, scholars, entrepreneurs and publishers), stimulated further research on the global ocean's northern spaces and laid the foundations of marine science.


Author(s):  
B. Verhaelen ◽  
F. Mayer ◽  
S. Peukert ◽  
G. Lanza

AbstractThe trend of globalization has led to a structural change in the sales and procurement markets of manufacturing companies in recent decades. In order not to be left behind by this change, companies have internationalized their production structures. Global production networks with diverse supply and service interdependencies are the result. However, the management of global production networks is highly complex. Key performance indicator (KPI) networks already exist at the corporate level and site level to support the management of complex systems. However, such KPI networks are not yet available to support the management of entire production networks. In this article, a KPI network for global production networks is presented, which links the key figures of the site level and the corporate level. By integrating both levels into a comprehensive KPI network, cause and effect relationship between the production-related KPIs and the strategic KPIs of a corporate strategy become transparent. To this end, this KPI network is integrated into a Performance Measurement and Management (PMM) methodology. This methodology consists of three phases: performance planning, performance improvement, and performance review. For testing the practical suitability, the PMM methodology is applied to the production network of an automotive supplier using a simulation model to estimate the effects of proposed improvement actions of the methodology.


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