The international fragmentation of economic activities – from research and design to production and marketing – described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy.

Global value chains (GVCs) are a key feature of the global economy in the 21st century. They show how international investment and trade create cross-border production networks that link countries, firms and workers around the globe. This Handbook describes how GVCs arise and vary across industries and countries, and how they have evolved over time in response to economic and political forces. With chapters written by leading interdisciplinary scholars, the Handbook unpacks the key concepts of GVC governance and upgrading, and explores policy implications for advanced and developing economies alike. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial}

Can firms and economies utilize global value chains for development? How can they move from low-income to middle-income and even high-income status? This book addresses these questions through a series of case studies examining upgradation and innovation by firms operating in GVCs in Asia. The countries examined are China, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, with studies of firms operating in varied sectors - aerospace components, apparel, automotive, consumer electronics including mobile phones, telecom equipment, IT software and services, and pharmaceuticals.

Supply chain management has long been a feature of industry and commerce but, with increasing demands from consumers, producers are spending more time and money investing in ways to make supply chains more sustainable. This exemplary Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive overview of current research on sustainable supply chain management.

This volume shows that in today’s globalized world, clusters are an important factor in explaining the different growth rates of firms, cities and regions. Drawing on the expertise of an international contributor team, it covers topics such as clusters and small and medium-sized enterprise competitiveness, innovation and science parks, clusters and multinationals, and information and communication technology clusters. It reveals great diversity in terms of the origin of clusters, the organizational relationships at play, and the characteristics of the firms involved. Taking lessons from a rich variety of literature and empirical cases, the book provides valuable insights for regional development and industrial policy. Economic Clusters and Globalization will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in economic geography, regional studies, entrepreneurship and international business.

This book contributes to the understanding of environment–economy relations from the perspective of economic geography, grounded in the institutional context of China. It demonstrates how classical economic geographies, new economic geographies, and geographies of economic globalization work together to affect the environment. It covers a series of classical topics like industrial location and industrial dynamics and some emerging fields like industrial evolution and global–local interaction and links them to environmental performance in China. The findings in this book echo the call for developing a more comprehensive and systematic research agenda of environmental economic geography. This book offers researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate students in related fields both theoretical and practical considerations of environmental economic geography. It also offers insights into the policy-making relevant to China’s greening efforts.

This book uses the examples of local supply firms in China and Brazil and their connections to the global automotive industry to explore the nature of current global value chains. It argues that lead firms make use of product architecture to globalize their procurement and supply chain management and that they effectively restructure the global supply base by internationalizing the most capable supply firms, thereby creating oligopolies controlled by the lead firm. The book goes on to contend that some firms have gained such powerful positions that they have gained a degree of control over other firms without the necessity of ownership – altering the mechanics of governance. Also, it shows how, although some supply firms from emerging markets have utilized their business ties with western assembly firms to upgrade themselves within the global value chain, most are squeezed out through increased global competition. Overall, the book makes a major new contribution to the economic theory of governance.

The Routledge Handbook of Industry and Development is a global overview of industrialisation. Each chapter will provide readers with contemporary insights into this this essential aspect of economic development. Industrialisation has been at the forefront of discussion on economic development since the earliest days of development economics. But over the last fifty years, the manufacturing sectors of different countries and regions have grown at strikingly different rates. In 1960 developing countries took a very small share of global manufacturing production. Today the position had changed radically with fast growth of manufacturing in many parts of what was originally the developing world, particularly in China and the rest of East Asia. On the other hand, countries in Africa and parts of Latin America have been largely left behind by this process of industrialisation. This volume aims to illuminate this uneven development and takes stock of the current issues that hinder and support industrialisation in low and middle income economies. This Handbook is a collection of chapters on different aspects of industrialisation experience in a range of countries. Key themes include, the role of manufacturing in growth, the nature of structural change at different stages of development, the role of manufacturing in employment creation, alternative options for trade and industrial policy, the key role of technology and technical change, and the impact of globalisation and the spread of global value chains and foreign direct investment on prospects for industrialisation. Several chapters discuss individual country experiences with examples from India, Mexico, South Africa and Tanzania, as well as an overview of African industrialisation. This authoritative Handbook will be a key reference source for those studying or wishing to understand contemporary economic development. Offering inspiration and direction for future research, this landmark volume will be of crucial importance to all development economics scholars and researchers.