A special issue of International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development
Rapid technological advances, organisational innovations and internationally accepted standards make fragmentation of activities into standardised units at all stages of a production value chain increasingly possible. Liberal trade and investment regimes create economic incentives for outsourcing the fragmented activities to specialised producers in different locations around the world. Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs), and their application in transport, supply-chain management and logistics, permit functional reintegration of the dispersed activities into new industrial systems of global value chains (GVCs) and production networks (GPNs). A group of leading transnational corporations (TNCs) from developed countries is playing a key role in organising and vertically coordinating these production systems.
Value chain fragmentation and increasing international trade based on differences in comparative advantages at a finer level of specialisation (as shown by the faster growth of international trade in intermediate goods than in final goods), are becoming key features of global integration. These processes are attracting much attention in academic and policy discussions dealing with contemporary globalisation and industrial upgrading.
This Special Issue seeks to identify and assess, with a sub-sector focus and interdisciplinary approach, prospects for industrial upgrading by developing countries in the GVC context, and what the policy and institutional underpinnings of these processes are.
The papers will encourage discussion among scholars from various disciplines dealing with the globalisation in production, innovation and trade and their impact on global economic development, and will communicate their findings and recommendations to various stakeholders involved in decision-making process at firm, regional, national and supra-national level.
For this Special Issue, we will welcome new and innovative contributions addressing following themes, but not limited to:
- The GVC governance concept
- Interactions of GVC governance and governance at the local (firm/cluster, and regional innovation system) level, national and supra-national level (role of bilateral and multilateral institutions)
- Global production and innovation networks
- Role of logistics in GVCs
- Dynamics of globalisation in specific industries
- Inter-chain innovations
- Market characteristics GVC are supplying and their impact on industrial upgrading of firms participating in those chains
- GVCs and poverty reduction
- SMEs and GVCs
- Intersection of value chain approach with other related approaches to sectoral analysis
- Linkages between value-chain framework and other disciplines
- Role of external and internal resources for development
- Industrial policy in the era of globalisation of production, innovation and trade
- Why mapping of value chain is important for policy?
- Globalisation in industry
- Globalisation of firms from late-industrialising countries (SMEs in particular)
- Benchmarking vertical specialisation in trade and benchmarking industrial upgrading
Extended abstract submission (max. 500 words) due: 30 November 2007
Full paper submission due: 31 January 2008
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