Shifting Ties: Social Networks in the Surgical Instrument Cluster of Sialkot,Pakistan

The paradox in the industrial district model is understanding how the divergent tendencies of local competition and co-operation are mediated. Social networks are said to provide mechanisms that regulate inter-firm relations and facilitate the flow of knowledge within the confines of the district. Empirical evidence of this, particularly from the South, is limited. This article draws on the case of the export-oriented surgical instrument cluster of Sialkot in Pakistan. It shows how social networks, based on kinship, family and localness, influence production relations, and how the impact of these interlinked local social networks have changed over time. The economic and social reputation that comes from being local is central to vertical and horizontal inter-firm relations within the cluster. Building social and economic ties with external agents is, however, also becoming important, especially to acquire the technical know-how necessary to remain competitive in global markets.     

Labour in Global Value Chains: Work Conditions in Football Manufacturing in China,India and Pakistan

A critical challenge facing developing country producers is to meet international labour standards and codes of conduct in order to engage in global value chains. Evidence of gains for workers from compliance with such standards and codes remains limited and patchy. This article focuses on the global football industry, a sector dominated by leading global brands that manage dispersed global value chains. It assesses the working conditions for football stitchers engaged in different forms of work organization, factories, stitching centres and home‐based settings in Pakistan, India and China. It draws on detailed qualitative primary field research with football‐stitching workers and producers in these three countries. The article explains how and why work conditions of football stitchers differ across these locations through an analytical framework that interweaves both global and local production contexts that influence work conditions. In doing so, it argues that current debates on the role of labour in global value chains have to go beyond a narrow focus on labour standards and corporate social responsibility compliance and engage with economic, technological and social upgrading as factors that could generate sustained improvements in real wages and workers’ conditions.     

Local and Regional Development in Global Value Chains,Production Networks and Innovation Networks: A Comparative Review and the Challenges for Future Research

Globalization as a process has developed exponentially over the past 20 years, generating multiple and opposite effects for local and regional development (LoRD). This has created both new opportunities as well as raising new threats for local actors, both public and private. This special issue sets out to consider the prospects for LoRD in this context. Our aim in the introductory article is to consider how globalization may bring about LoRD. We do this through a comparative review of three critical analytical frameworks that have been used in recent years to examine the changing dynamics of globalization and their consequences for local production systems, namely global value chains, global production networks and global innovation networks. We provide an overview of these distinct approaches, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Our argument is not that any one of these approaches is necessarily “better” than the others, but rather that to formulate a more complete and dynamic territorial perspective on regional development in the context of globalization, there needs to be an attempt at (eclectically) integrating the elements of these three distinct frameworks. The article then goes on to show how individual contributions in this special issue push forward this agenda, drawing on these distinct analytical frameworks to consider the transformative prospects for LoRD.     

Seismic Evaluation and Retrofit of Asymmetric Multi-Story Wood-Frame Building

The presented research focuses on large-scale seismic testing under multi-directional ground motion of a three-story high, wood-frame residential building representing late 1960's California construction. Earthquake lateral resistance is provided by plywood shear walls around the perimeter of the building with an open front in the first story for tuck-under parking. Accordingly, the as-built structural configuration is asymmetric in plan and discontinuous in elevation with tendency to twist about a vertical axis and to form a weak story mechanism. The test results confirm this tendency. They also reveal the sensitivity of the response to multi-direction ground motion. Asymmetric damage patterns are induced by the multi-component motions in the walls oriented perpendicular to the open front for the as-built test structure, with or without finish materials. However, the observed damage remained noncritical as far as structural integrity is concerned even for ground accelerations exceeding 120% of that recorded during Northridge earthquake. This is viewed as a consequence of the better construction of the test building compared to actual construction. Investigated retrofit includes adding a welded moment resisting steel frame around of the garage opening and strengthening the diaphragm to header beam connections. The study indicates that the retrofit significantly reduced the maximum story drift in the open front. Moreover, the finish material and the retrofit greatly reduce the maximum rotation of the building about the vertical axis.     

Active use of panoramic mobile mapping systems for as built surveying and heritage documentation

Mobile mapping systems (MMS) are widely used technology nowadays for spatial data collection of large scale projects like for city and highway mapping. The systems are mainly equipped with laser scanning sensors and/or imaging sensors mounted on a moving vehicle during the scene capture. Imaging sensors are normally cameras which either capture perspective or panoramic images covering the whole horizon of the vehicle. The orientation of the captured panoramic images is accurate to centimeters’ level because of the precise positioning and navigation systems equipped with these mapping systems. However, the positioning accuracy of mobile mapping systems can be degraded in city centers or urban canyons because of the satellite signal disturbances.

In this article, we discuss the following objectives: (1) the possibility to use the mobile mapping images for cultural heritage documentation and as built surveying and how accurate the mapping can be; (2) the concept of using the mobile mapping images as a tool of georeferencing the crowdsource images; and (3) the efficiency of using the multi-temporal mobile mapping images for occluded free cultural heritage facade orthophotos. The mobile mapping systems of CycloMedia with two panoramic products of Cyclorama images (12 MP) and HD Cycloramas (100 MP) are used for the experimental tests in this research article.