دانلود رایگان مقاله شرکت های آسیایی و بازسازی زنجیره های ارزش جهانی

ABSTRACT

Asian trans-national garment manufacturers are transforming the structure of global value chains in the apparel industry. Recent studies show such first tier suppliers undertaking a greater range of functional activities. In many cases, these firms originate from the so-called ‘Rising Power’ economies, particularly ‘Greater China’ and South Asia. We argue that such, transnational, Asian firms can play a pivotal and strategic role in shaping the geography and organisational restructuring of the global value chain. Drawing on secondary sources and primary research we illustrate how such firms manage complex international production linkages, and ensure the incorporation of Jordan into the global garment industry. The paper contributes to the understanding ofthe role ofthese firms and how their behaviour is driven by complex dynamics linked to their own business strategies,their linkages with buyers, and their ability to exploit production and trade opportunities while maintaining high levels of global locational flexibility.

5. Conclusions

The emergence of Asian transnational suppliers in the garments industry has been documented in the literature through the ‘triangular manufacturing’ model and more recently the work on ‘giant transnational suppliers’. This paper contributes to this literature by drawing on primary and secondary sources to illustrate the growing role of these firms in managing the global value chains in the garment industry. The first aspect, which has been discussed in the literature, relates to the significance of Asian firms in research, design, product development, and logistics which fits within the upgrading notion in the literature of global value chains. The second, which has received very little attention, relates to these firms as the managers of the geographical and organisational restructuring of global value chains by embodying rapid market, production, and organisational shifts in their internationalisation patterns and in the ways they engage with different host locations. This shift, often undertaken in collaboration with key buyers, entails important organisational capacities to orchestrate flows of products, capital, managers and supervisors, and in some cases workers, across diverse production locations across the globe while at the same time maintaining an organisational model that allows limited embeddedness in host countries and high overall locational and organisational flexibility. Accordingly, we view these firms as not just first tier suppliers but as strategic and pivotal actors that increasingly shape the geography of the global value chain. This role is important to highlight as it differs from the conventional upgrading assumption in both the GVC and business studies frameworks in which firms move to capture more functions in the value chain with branding and retailing being the final stage in this process. This, for example, is an explicit trajectory suggested by Applebaum’s treatment of ‘giant transnational contractors’. While some Asian garment firms we studied had developed own brand manufacture, especially within their domestic or regional markets, many others have purposively opted not to move into branding and retailing on a global scale. This may be, as (Merk, 2014) recently suggests, because Asian first tier garment manufacturers are keen to avoid the attention of global labour organisations and NGOs in their campaigns to improve working conditions. In addition, branding and retailing are functional activities that require distinct sets of capacities and skills which are often difficult to acquire and potentially risky. Our findings suggest that there can be important competitive gains and returns for Asian garment firms that upgrade to become effective chain co-ordinators maintaining multiple production locations.