Firm agency and global production network dynamics

The Global production networks (GPN) framework has been influential in the analysis of globally coordinated economic arrangements. However, research on GPNs tend to focus on a well-established industries and their existing governance structures with a very little attention to the temporality and changes in these networks and their governance structures. Specifically, despite the central role of ‘lead-firms’ in GPNs, the literature lacks a clear depiction of their competitive and evolutionary trajectory. In response, this paper is concerned with (re)opening the ‘black-box’ of firms and showing how lead-firms’ strategies and practices shape the evolutionary dynamics of GPNs. The paper argues that changing lead firm strategies play a crucial role in shaping the evolution of GPNs, reflecting changes in the industrial and/or business and institutional environments. The paper investigates the Danish, multinational energy company, Ørsted, and discusses the importance of accounting for firm dynamic capabilities, i.e. intra-firm practices and extra-firm (evolutionary) dynamic drivers, in analytical frameworks that analyse GPN dynamics and industries. Lead-firm strategies are shaped by firm-specific capabilities, industry-specific competitive dynamics, and institutions. Accordingly, GPNs’ evolutionary process can be understood as an adapting and/or response mechanism by lead-firms to changes in local and international business as well as multi-scalar institutional environments.     

From Strategic Coupling to Recoupling and Decoupling: Restructuring Global Production Networks and Regional Evolution in China

The global production networks (GPNs) perspective, especially its focal concept of “strategic coupling” has been widely applied to regional studies in the era of globalization. The 2000s, especially the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, has witnessed a dramatic restructuring of the governance structure of GPNs; the effects on regional evolution have, however, been understudied. Echoing to MacKinnon's [(2012) Beyond strategic coupling: Reassessing the firm-region Nexus in global production networks, Journal of Economic Geography, 12, pp. 227–245] recent plea for conceptualizing the types, degree and depth of strategic coupling in the GPNs framework, this paper postulates that regional trajectories have been reshaped by the transition from strategic coupling to recoupling and decoupling, as a result of regional selection and abandonment of transnational corporations (TNCs) in host regions in China. Based on updated field investigation and in-depth interviews during the period of mid-2008 and early 2012, this paper examines and compares the transformation of the cross-border production networks driven by Hong Kong and Taiwan-based TNCs, particularly their divergent engagements in decoupling from source regions in coastal China, e.g. the Pearl River Delta and recoupling with the inland provinces, such as Sichuan and Hubei. Particular attention is paid to the changing power relations among TNCs and concerned regions with the emergence of key supplier-led domestic market-oriented production networks in China. Through developing an evolutionary framework on strategic coupling, the paper puts forward pertinent topics on the research agenda to explore dynamic interaction between GPN restructuring and regional evolution in the contemporary global economy.     

全球生产网络（GPNs）与区域发展的动态战略耦合——苏南与苏北韩资汽车行业企业价值捕获轨迹的比较

全球生产网络（GPN）2.0认为实现从低水平到高水平动态战略耦合是区域发展的动因。该分析框架认为应从垂直（组织）和水平（空间）两个维度来分析企业价值捕获轨迹，从而分析特定区域的战略耦合模式。选取62家江苏省韩国投资汽车行业企业，采用GPN 2.0分析框架分析企业价值捕获轨迹，并对比苏北和苏南GPNs和区域发展战略耦合的模式差异。研究发现：苏北处于“结构性耦合”阶段，苏南处于“功能性耦合”阶段。苏北和苏南应该采取不同发展战略，为实现更高水平的战略耦合做好准备。     

MAKING CHAINS THAT (UN)MAKE THINGS: WASTE–VALUE RELATIONS AND THE BANGLADESHI RUBBISH ELECTRONICS INDUSTRY

There is growing empirical and theoretical interest in post‐consumption activity that results in the capture and creation of value from waste in the global economy. This article engages with two dominant approaches to tracing the capture and creation of value, global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs), and their shared call to examine waste disposal and recycling. Using non‐participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, and a survey we examine what happens to the products of one of GVCs ‘and GPNs’ paradigmatic industries, electronics, when they are labelled e‐waste and are imported into Dhaka, Bangladesh, as rubbish electronics. Rather than wasting and final disposal predominating, our research documents a substantial rubbish recovery economy that captures and creates value anew. Consequently, we argue that both GVC and GPN approaches must rethink how they theorize the capture and creation of value.     

Hypermobility and the governance of global production networks: The case of the Canadian cycle industry and its links with China and Taiwan

Western firms engaged in mass retailing and in product assembly make frequent changes to their global production networks (GPNs). Indeed, some GPNs show a tendency to hypermobility, which we define as a rapid switching of economic links among manufacturers, importers, and retailers. This theme is explored in the context of the Canadian bicycle industry where domestic production collapsed between 1980 and 2008, following a century of remarkable stability. After a period of flux when Taiwan was the key player, China has emerged as the dominant original equipment manufacturer (OEM) of bicycles sold in Canada, with big‐box stores accounting for the great majority of sales. We connect this increasing fluidity in supply arrangements and in the global organization of the industry with the governance of these GPNs. Several aspects of governance are considered, including the Sloanist practices of the largest Canadian retailers, and the activist role of the Chinese state in directing regional patterns of manufacturing in China.     

The “Corona Warriors”? Community health workers in the governance of India's COVID-19 response

India's nearly 1-million strong band of quasi-volunteer accredited social health activists (ASHAs) have been key actors in government efforts to control COVID-19. Utilizing a nationalist rhetoric of war, ASHAs were swiftly mobilized by the government in March 2020 as ‘COVID warriors’ engaged in tracking illness, disseminating information, and caring for quarantined individuals. The speed at which ASHAs were mobilized into mentally and physically grueling labor was all the more stunning given these minimally paid community health workers have long been seen to have low morale given their precarious, informalized work arrangements. Building on work examining the spatialities of global health governance alongside literature on geographic contingency, this paper explores the ways that nationalist COVID-19 war rhetoric promulgated from Delhi worked as a technology of health governance to propel ASHAs into certain forms of action, yet also opened up spaces of potentiality for them to reimagine their relationship to both the state and the communities they serve. In particular, in our analysis of in-depth telephone interviews with ASHA workers in the state of Himachal Pradesh, we find that their hailing as COVID warriors inspired patriotic calls to duty and legitimized their (long over-looked) roles as critical governance actors, yet also was subject to resistance and reworking due to a combination of institutional histories, local politics, as well as happenstantial everyday encounters of ASHA work. The precarious employment of ASHAs – in terms of basic remuneration as well as the great on-the-job risks that they have faced – underscores both the fragile nature of India's health governance system as well as possible political movements for its renewal. We conclude by calling for geographers to give greater attention to community health care workers as a key window into understanding the uneven ways in which health systems are made manifest on the ground, and their ability to respond to citizens' healthcare needs – both in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.     

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

This article explores the opportunities a GPN approach providesfor understanding the network configurations and regional developmentimpacts associated with extractive industries. The article elaboratestwo core claims: (i) that the application of the GPN analyticalframework provides a way to make progress in a stalled policydebate regarding the linkages between resource extraction andsocio-economic development (popularly known as the ‘resourcecurse thesis’); and (ii) that the encounter between GPNand a natural resource-based sector introduces distinctive issues—associatedwith the materiality and territoriality of extractive commodities—that,to date, GPN has not considered fully. The article examinesthe global production network for oil as an empirical case ofhow extractive industries can provide (limited) opportunitiesfor socio-economic development.     

Does Spatial Clustering of Foreign Direct Investment Foster Global Production Networks? The Case of Qingdao,China

This article examines how spatial clustering of foreign direct investment (FDI) can foster a global production network (GPN). The cluster concept, in general, stressed inter-firm relations between local and regional firms while neglecting global–local linkages in the spatial context. In contrast, GPN focuses on the advantages of international production organization and governance structure but underestimates regional or localized channels of production arrangement. By integrating the conceptual framework of spatial clustering of FDI and GPN, this paper provides empirical evidence of various channels to knowledge and innovation transfer between domestic firms and foreign-invested enterprises. This paper demonstrates that the different types of linkages formation are key determinant factors for establishing cluster through contributing to local economic development.     

旅游社区治理多主体共生模式研究——基于青海省两个典型社区实例

旅游社区治理与多元主体之间的相互关系密切相关,多元主体和谐共生是旅游社区治理的关键所在。本文基于共生理论,选择青海省两个典型社区为案例地,将当地政府、社区居民、游客和旅游相关企业作为研究对象,从定量评估的角度分析了不同主体之间的共生关系和模式,通过构建不同主体之间的理论模式,力求把旅游社区治理主体间的关系研究从"消极或积极"的态度研究转向各主体"共赢关系"的格局研究视角。研究结果显示：不同旅游社区治理主体之间：①均存在正向共生关系;②相互影响程度是有差异的;③共生关联的紧密程度有别;④不同旅游社区的政府、居民、企业和游客等共生主体相互之间均属于正向共生模式。其中,湟中县塔尔寺景区为核心的旅游社区是CRGT非对称互惠共生模式;互助土族故土园景区为核心的旅游社区是RGCT对称互惠共生模式。     

跨国公司地方嵌入新视角:基于地方劳工市场的研究进展与理论思考

20世纪90年代以来,跨国公司地方嵌入研究相对聚焦于资本密集型或技术密集型企业,而需要大量非熟练工人的劳动密集型跨国企业并未引起足够关注,建立在产业联系、技术外溢、社会网络等核心概念基础上的跨国公司地方嵌入分析框架很显然不能很好地解释劳动密集型跨国公司地方嵌入的理论与实践问题。在劳工地理学、新经济地理学等学科背景下,基于全球生产网络、关系嵌入、空间修复等核心概念,研究分别从劳工能动性的空间尺度、跨国公司地方嵌入的劳工要素、劳工管控对跨国公司的地方嵌入、区域劳工景观的空间修复等视角出发,系统梳理相关研究进展并提出未来主要研究议题,包括如何识别劳工供需因素对跨国公司地方嵌入的影响机制,如何剖析特殊劳工管控体制下劳工空间实践与能动性的关系,如何刻画跨国公司地方嵌入对区域劳工经济地理景观的影响,如何总结跨国公司地方嵌入与区域发展的战略耦合模式等。     

Global Production Networks and Global Innovation Networks: Stability Versus Growth

This paper works with global production network (GPN) as compared to global innovation network (GIN) theory and focuses on the global information and communication technologies (ICT), specifically the hard disk drive (HDD) aspects of that system. In this respect it has a double distinction to examine: it concerns complex socio-economic and political governance processes focused upon innovation, argued by many to be the guiding principle of the construction of economic advantage in the contemporary era and it utilizes theory to capture important contrasts in the condition of key and changing building blocks in the global ICT industry. Methodologically, it is qualitative and necessarily so, based in this instance on much secondary information interpretation and some interviews. The larger project of which these findings are a small part had a balance of the two methods of inquiry. Empirically, the paper finds that GPN set-ups are not particularly innovation-inducing, tend to stabilizing over the long term and firm growth is largely by acquisition. The contemporary global ICT system is, by contrast, endogenously innovative, far from stable and has greater developmental potential because of its key GIN characteristic, which is its capacity for novelty.     

Hospitality workers and the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility

ABSTRACT

Building on the recent interest among labor geographers for workers’ ability to strategize around their mobility, and tourism researchers’ longstanding examination of mobile tourism workers, this paper explores the mobility agency of differently positioned hospitality workers. The findings suggest that workers are not always ‘strategic’ in relation to labor mobility, and that labor mobility and career paths must be recognized as fragmented, happenstance and erratic. Furthermore, this article argues for an approach to the study of mobile tourism workers that takes the relational as well as temporal aspects into account. This endeavor is in particular guided by the notion of stories-so-far and the understanding of people as both being and becoming. The empirical basis of this paper consists of 22 interviews with hospitality workers in four hotel workplaces in Sweden; the luxury city hotel, the suburban chain hotel, the city chain hotel and the seasonal hotel. Ultimately, I suggest that the multifaceted complex of considerations which workers negotiate, could be conceptualized as the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility.     

Three worlds of global value chains: multiple governance and upgrading paths in the Korean animation industry

Cultural production is increasingly fragmented and dispersed organizationally and geographically as a result of growing offshore outsourcing within and across firms, giving rise to global value chains (GVCs). Yet, a GVC perspective has been applied limitedly to the study of cultural industries without serious consideration of inter-firm governance structure and its consequences on upgrading. Building upon the GVC literature on multiple governance structure, this paper examines three GVCs in Korea with distinctive governance forms: U.S. outsourcing chains, Japanese outsourcing chains, and international coproduction chains. The two outsourcing chains exhibited marked differences in various governance dimensions with distinctive upgrading patterns. International coproduction chains emerged as an alternative pathway of upgrading after the rapid decline of outsourcing exports, posing unique opportunities and challenges to firms and policy-makers. The findings are discussed in the context of multiple governance structure in GVCs and its implications to upgrading in networked global cultural production.     

Multi‐scalar Labour Agency in Global Production Networks: Contestation and Crisis in the South African Fruit Sector

Integration into global production networks poses significant challenges, and also opens up opportunities, for labour agency. Governance by lead firms affects working conditions and can drive precarious employment; this interacts with and can constrain national labour legislation covering labour rights. The global production networks (GPN) approach facilitates examination of commercial value chains, their interaction with institutionally and societally embedded labour markets, and potential leverage points for labour contestation transcending local, national and global scales. This informs analysis of commercial/societal articulations as contested processes opening space for multi‐scalar labour agency within global production networks. This article examines how tensions between global commercial and societally embedded dimensions of global production networks drive precarious work, and seeks to understand the implications for emergent forms of multi‐scalar community‐based labour agency. These questions are explored through an examination of labour casualization and contestation in South African fruit production in 2012–13, using the GPN approach. The authors find that multi‐scalar channels of labour agency leveraging both global commercial and government actors can enable reworking by unorganized community‐based labour to bargain for better pay and conditions, but if the underlying global commercial logic is to be challenged, more systemic strategies are required.     

Infrastructural territorialisations: Mega-infrastructures and the (re)making of Kenya

This paper, based on historical and contemporary dynamics of railway infrastructures in Kenya, analyses how mega-infrastructures are central in state practices of infrastructural territorialisation – an infrastructure-based production of territoriality as a historically and geographically specific form of spatio-political order and organisation, imbued with social tensions, stemming from the state-led imposition of a techno-politics onto its territory. Focusing on territorial and political objectives of the state advanced through the Uganda Railway and the Standard Gauge Railway, the paper demonstrates how both of these projects have been central in colonial and contemporary practices of infrastructural territorialisation, albeit in mercurial ways that do not fully represent original techno-political intensions of the state. This discussion, first, highlights how megaprojects – although primarily analysed by recent geographical scholarship as advancing contemporary geographies of global capitalism – also contingently coalesce with state (re)territorialisation practices. Second, undertaking these analyses in the Kenyan context, the paper shows how, despite shared historical dynamics of contingent state territorialisation – and the reconstitution of racial and socio-economic inequalities, advanced through megaprojects that in Kenya are socially interpreted through historical experiences of colonialism – current infrastructural territorialisations are also different; whilst the colonial territorialisation of Kenya emerged as relatively unchallenged, its present state territory-making is undermined by both the global character of megaprojects and the external actors that the state relies on for its practices of infrastructural territorialisation.     

Precarity and guest work in U.S. tourism: J-1 and H-2B visa programs

ABSTRACT

Over the past couple decades, hotels and resorts in the United States have come to rely on the influx of foreign guest workers to meet labor demand during peak tourism seasons. In particular, employers leverage two visas programs: J-1 and H-2B. While helping to solve seasonal workforce issues, these programs have come under scrutiny by worker advocacy groups and other stakeholders who have recognized that both programs at times feature unfavorable conditions for workers. This case study focuses on the precarities embedded in the lives of these foreign guest workers when they come to the United States. Particular attention is paid to the ways that policies crafted to facilitate the flexibilities required by employers have a hand in structuring the precarities associated with living and working in the United States. Results show that workers are at times vulnerable to inadequate housing, questionable employment practices, weak program sponsorship, and, in rare cases, human trafficking. Analysis suggests a general spatial unevenness in the ways that workers experience precarities, especially pertaining to the presence of effective community outreach programs aimed at assisting foreign workers. It is argued that the latter are particularly important for ensuring that guest worker programs can achieve the goals laid out by government agencies of providing employment and protection for workers. Research is based primarily on interviews with major stakeholder groups associated with tourism guest work, including guest workers, advocates, and program sponsors. It is suggested that despite recent reforms, more work is needed to ensure that guest workers' experiences in the United States are not fraught with vulnerability.     

旅游目的地社区居民相对剥夺感研究回顾与展望

旅游地居民与多元利益主体间的矛盾和冲突，是旅游领域发展不平衡不充分的重要表现。相对剥夺感是认识旅游地居民行为逻辑的新视角，也为化解旅游地居民与多元利益主体间的矛盾冲突、改善旅游领域基层社会治理提供了新的思路。文章从研究源起、概念内涵和测量维度、影响因素和形成机制、行为效应、应用范畴和研究方法等6个方面对旅游地居民相对剥夺感研究进行了分析回顾。在此基础上，讨论了旅游地居民相对剥夺感研究对于新时期我国旅游地社会治理的现实意义和学术价值，同时构建了旅游地居民相对剥夺感研究框架，并提出了未来研究的方向和重点。     

The Economic Geography of the Meso-global Spaces: Integrating Multinationals and Clusters at the Local–Global Level

The local–global phenomenon literature is fragmented between the fields of international business and economic geography (EG). In the case of the latter, the literature, produced within the global production networks (GPNs) and global value chain frameworks, does not address the central role of firms, especially multinationals which co-locate and connect territories along GPNs. This paper develops a cross-field conceptual integration in order to enrich the EG perspective, using qualitative research methodology to test the framework. The results have important implications for scholars and policymakers.     

整体网视角下传统村落旅游地咨询网络结构与社区权力分异——以湖南张谷英村为例

本文基于整体网视角对张谷英村社区咨询网进行研究,试图揭示传统村落旅游地社会网运行机理。通过确定样本边界得到了169户家庭构成的样本空间,对咨询网络结构分析与社区权力分异研究发现:(1)张谷英村旅游地社区咨询网络结构呈现不均衡性;大多数家庭活跃于由可达性产生的1-派系小圈子之中,并由11个基础派系衍生出240个衍生派系。(2)整体网视角下张谷英村旅游地社区权力分异呈现金字塔结构;年龄、是否参与旅游经营、助人经历、能力展现与业余爱好是权力分异的主要影响因素;位于权力分异金字塔结构顶端的家庭很少,但对张谷英村旅游地社区咨询网络演化产生重要影响。本文研究也显示:旅游实践活动既是传统村落旅游地社区成员能力展现的重要平台,也是体现社区社会网权力分异的重要平台;基于社会网视角的传统村落旅游地社区权力分异将处于动态演化中。     

西方经济地理学关于全球化经济的理论演化综述

清晰的理解全球化经济如何演化是一项非常紧迫和艰巨的任务。传统的经济地理学主要通过国际劳动分工理论解释全球化经济。但二十世纪九十年代以来的外购和及时生产等新的生产组织方式的出现,使得全球经济体系变得愈加复杂。西方经济地理学家开始将其他相关学科的理论和方法论(如资源基础理论、嵌入理论、行为者网络理论等),应用于全球化的研究中,构建了一些新的全球经济的分析框架,例如全球价值链、全球商品链和全球生产网络,体现了经济地理学新的发展方向-"关系"经济地理学。这些链/网络的分析框架在多学科领域引起强大的反响,使得西方经济地理学的学科地位得到很大提升。