The Global Production Networks (GPNs) framework has shown how interactions among various types of firm and non-firm actors at different geographic scales are often crucial to improve the design and implementation of social and environmental standards. However, one set of actors that the GPN framework has largely overlooked are business associations. Sectoral expertise, access to member firms and the ability to represent firms towards external standard-setters make local business associations interesting as regulatory intermediaries between member firms and local and global standard setters. Nonetheless, the ways in which such intermediary roles may operate, and how they may build on local collective action within business associations, remain conceptually and empirically understudied. In seeking to contribute to this gap, this thesis addresses the question: What roles do business associations play in the governance of sustainability standards within GPNs? To address this question, the thesis explores the value-added of an analytical approach that integrates concepts from the literature on associational governance and regulatory governance into the GPN framework. It focuses on collective self-regulation and intermediation as two distinct but potentially complementary roles that business associations can take on in the governance of sustainability standards. In the GPN context, intermediary roles can play out towards local and global standard-setters. This analytical framework is applied to a case study of the CSC9000T standard created by the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC). Empirical data was collected over a 10 months period between December 2014 - September 2015. It includes secondary documents and 58 semi-structured primary interviews with Chinese business associations and firms as well as international actors involved in CSR in China. A congruence analysis is used to examine the extent to which each of the two conceptual roles of self-regulation and intermediation can explain CNTAC's roles in CSC9000T. Findings show that both roles add value to explaining the case study. However, limitations faced in both roles reflect how the association's embeddedness in the overall GPN influences these roles. Overall, the thesis argues that a conceptual lens that views business associations both as collective actors and as regulatory intermediaries may add value to understanding their ability to govern sustainability standards, but needs to be seen in the context of an association's embeddedness in the wider GPN. These findings have implications for considering when, and how, local business associations may be relevant in wider research on sustainability standards in global production.

Taiwan¡¦s yacht manufacturing driven by overseas buyers has brought Kaohsiung so far from the local, but so close to the world, in a unique relation between the global production networks (GPN) and the local cluster. In accordance with the commodity flow in the economic geography, it formulates the embeddedness within the yacht cluster, connects to the global market, in terms of recognition of ¡§yacht culture¡¨. The method applied in the study is one-to-one interview. The interview records are to be validated by cross-checking with the publicised written documents, and personal experience to the UK boat shows. Firstly, the specialised cluster of Kaohsiung yacht industry is analysed by members, organisations and business trends. Then, the yacht market is explained globally, such as the characteristics of the transnational corporations (TNCs), the commodity chains, and especially, the dealers/brokers, who act as key controller at the sales channel. In addition, the recognition on yacht industry invisibly dominates the aspects of manufacture and business nature, from local to global, which incubates its importance from yacht culture. Finally, the role played by the state for the past years, as supporter and destroyer, is to be evaluated accordingly. Is yacht implied simply as a product, or a life-style? In fact, Taiwan¡¦s yacht manufacturers grouped in a specialised cluster have been benefiting from job flexibility by producing quality items with fast income. However, the business model of Kaohsiung yacht cluster is to be reshaped, due to the demand of branding and creativity, reinforcement of market access, and inevitable global flows of manpower and resources.

Labor geographers have identified multiple strategies through which workers assert their demands in an era of global production networks. In this thesis I examine the strategic organizational actions of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a community-based organization representing immigrant farm-workers in southwestern Florida. Central to the successes of the CIW is its strategy to organize and embed its agency in civil society. Social actors have proved to be of vital importance as they enabled the CIW to position itself strategically in important locations of the production network to contest capitalist geographies more effectively. Using qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with representatives of churches, religious-community organizations, and interfaith non-profits working with the CIW, I argue that the CIW‘s strategies theoretically expands our understanding of labor agency and how spatiality, and specifically place, shapes the potential for workers‘ agency.

Achieving sustainable production is a critical task in today’s globalised world. This is especially the case in the cotton garment industry where globally dispersed suppliers feed rapidly expanding demand across international markets. Practices associated with cotton garment production face numerous sustainability challenges from cotton farming to textile and garment manufacturing. Retailers are under increasing pressure to address these challenges and leading retailers are now actively trying to promote more sustainable production across all stages of production from raw material to final product. While numerous studies have investigated the relationship between retailers and their upper tier suppliers, there is little understanding of how sustainability challenges can be addressed across fragmented production processes. It is this gap that this thesis seeks to fill. Promoting sustainable production from raw materials to the final stages of manufacturing involves influencing practices of a diverse set of businesses responsible for different stages of production. This thesis defines the set of businesses that turn raw materials into final products as an ‘extended supplier network’ (ESN). Drawing on global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) approaches to understanding how production is organised, the core question of this thesis is: To what extent is buyerdriven governance sufficient for promoting sustainable production across fragmented production processes in an ESN? GVC and GPN research provides insight into this issue as it offers a way to conceptualise how lead firms influence their suppliers. The GVC approach highlights the importance of lead buyers. The GPN approach incorporates this argument but further emphasises the importance of spatiality and the roles of a wider set of actors and processes. While both approaches theoretically incorporate all stages of production, garment industry studies using these approaches have tended to focus on relationships between brands and retailers and upper tier suppliers, paying insufficient attention to lower tiers. Considering the case of Indian cotton clothing production for major UK retailers, this study explores retailers’ governance relationships with producers at different points in their ESNs. Producers’ experiences of vertical governance through buyer-seller relationships across all stages of production within an ESN are explored. These producers’ experiences with horizontal governance within distinct local productive systems are also considered. Diverse producers’ locations within the ESN and within local productive systems are found to involve different governance experiences within the same ESN. Across the ESN, vertical governance flows are found to be limited by variation in potential for buyer governance across buyer-seller relationships in the multiple vertical pathways connecting retailers to raw material producers. Alternatively, retailers can connect to producers by making non-sourcing horizontal connections with actors in local productive systems. While dominant methods in retailers’ efforts at governance for sustainability have been vertical, horizontal connections are increasing across the industry. However, despite the emergence of new connections, this research finds that retailers’ influence over lower tier production processes remains limited. Empirically, this thesis provides insight into the complexity of sustainability challenges involved in the production of cotton garments. Conceptually, it shows the nature of diverse governance relationships across an ESN. It also emphasises that effective governance for sustainability cannot be achieved simply through vertical buyerdriven governance. Instead a more nuanced, and more complex, understanding of the interplay between vertical and horizontal is required, particularly considering the role of alliances. This has significant implications for policy, including the public and private governance for sustainability in the global cotton garment industry.

The aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the offshoring and outsourcing practices in Multinational Corporations, when the headquarters are registered and located in either the UK or Germany; are embedded in the institutional contexts of their respective home countries. There are six research questions relating to differences in approach and choice of location, ownership and coordination, employment practice, cultural proximity, trade union influence and finally the extent of re-shoring. These are primarily assessed through the 'varieties of capitalism' perspective. A comparative case study approach has been adopted with a focus on two sectors; airlines and engineering; in each case a major UK and German organisation are compared. Fourteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews took place in both the home countries and overseas locations in Europe, India and Asia. The sample size is small, however, each was with a senior executive and the transcripts revealed 'rich data' for compiling the case studies and answering the research questions. The contribution to original thinking is a conceptual framework posited by proposing a taxonomy to analyse the relationship between coordinated and liberal market economies and the components of the offshoring and / or outsourcing process. Reference is made to theory drawn from the resource based view, global production networks, dynamic capabilities, embeddedness as well as varieties of capitalism to focus on competences, spatial dimensions and power. It is this collective approach that is considered to be novel. Qualitative analysis is deployed to re-construct the actual framework for each industry sector. Constructs (Reichertz, 2004) combining abduction, deduction and induction are used to develop propositions that lead to conclusions. The similarities between the two UK companies and the two German companies confirms the usefulness of the taxonomy and allows for its extension to other firms and sectors. Key findings and conclusions from the two case studies are that German organizations are less inclined to outsource (in both sectors) preferring to reduce costs and retain control through captive offshoring. The UK businesses were less risk adverse and more flexible and agile in their sourcing policies. There was evidence that the UK companies regarded outsourcing and offshoring as options for closer co-operation that may lead to strategic alliances and mergers or acquisition. The relationships with trade unions/works council was also found to be very different, with a reluctance by management in Germany to progress radical initiatives. Other differences in terms of autonomy and division of labour were found. From an institutional perspective the German CME's cases were less able to deploy outsourcing and offshoring strategies with the degrees of freedom that the UK LMEs typically enjoyed. CMEs are constrained by their policies, interconnectedness and style of working. A number of ambiguities are highlighted. The thesis argues that the outsourcing and offshoring practices are embedded to a high degree in the institutional practices of the home countries. Finally, the empirical novelty lies in the 'rich data' generated by valuable insights from the senior executive interviewees to which the researcher was privileged to have access.

Workers in labour-intensive industries in developing countries have been described as the ‘hidden hands’ in the making of valuable goods in global production networks (GPNs). The process of improving the rights and entitlements of workers in GPNs have been referred to as ’social upgrading’. However, literature on social upgrading has tended to overlook the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and there is still little scientific understanding of how small businesses in developing countries can engage in social upgrading. The aim of this thesis is to enhance the understanding of how SMEs in developing countries can improve working conditions and labour rights. Through a qualitative case study, this study goes beyond statements of leading Fair Trade brands to provide insights based on voices of both workers and owner-managers in a small garment factory in Nepal. This study brings forward observations where SMEs, shaped by their characteristics, are enabled to evade responsibilities concerning working conditions and labour rights.

Given growing concerns regarding the chocolate sector's long-term future, ever more private-sector, public-sector and civil-society stakeholders have become involved in initiatives aiming to make cocoa production more 'sustainable'. However, despite the omnipresent term, stakeholders' understandings of associated environmental, commercial and socio-economic priorities diverge: while transforming cocoa into a more attractive livelihood for farmers is paramount for some, others prioritise links to global environmental challenges. A third dimension encompasses commercial concerns related to securing supply, an increasing qualm given projected cocoa shortages and ever-rising concentration in the marketplace. This research argues there are considerable tensions between different stakeholders' commercial, socio-economic and environmental priorities in cocoa sustainability initiatives especially in light of the sector's intensifying challenges. Further tensions emerge between underlying drivers and representations, as public-facing communication continues to emphasise altruism rather than commercial necessity, locating engagements in 'nice-to-have' rather than 'business imperative' territory. Based on documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation, this thesis aims to capture how cocoa-sector changes have driven shifts in stakeholder priorities and representations, incorporating voices from across the initiatives ranging from cocoa producers to chocolate consumers. Utilising a modified global production networks lens to represent the full spectrum of stakeholders involved, the research maps three cocoa sustainability initiatives incorporating conservation or carbon measures in terms of power and embeddedness, stakeholder drivers and representations. While identifying tensions, it also argues that acknowledging divergent understandings of the polysemic 'sustainability' concept constitutes an opportunity for a much-needed redressing of power and embeddedness asymmetries to address systemic issues threatening the sector's future. However, the thesis also observes that despite protestations of partnership, few actors are willing to contemplate the systemic changes in favour of more equitable treatment and power distribution which would be required to safeguard the sector's long-term viability. This thesis's contributions include its unprecedented critical exploration of the diverging socio-economic, commercial and environmental drivers which diverse stakeholders associate with cocoa sustainability, the meanings they create towards the public, and the link to underlying power and embeddedness structures. These analytical foci have proved instrumental in unpacking emerging tensions, which are likely to grow more marked as cocoa shortages become more acute and understandings of sustainability continue to diverge.

Toutefois, l’interaction entre la terre, le territoire et la production globale n’a pas fait l’objet d’une attention importante dans la discipline juridique, y compris par les auteurs qui s’intéressent à la création et la production de valeur dans le capitalisme des chaînes globales d’approvisionnement. Historiquement, le territoire a été central dans la construction des États, comme dans les distinctions sociales et les distributions de pouvoirs qui caractérisent chaque communauté. Pour cettes raisons, j’ai écris cette thèse dans la perspective d’exposer le rôle que le droit tient dans la détermination des modes selon lesquels la terre et le territoire sont intégrés dans le capitalisme transnational, et tout particulièrement lorsqu’il s’agit de les transformer en source de valeur qui peut être appropriée. Dans le premier chapitre, la directive européenne sur l’énergie renouvelable, les traités bilatéraux d’investissement et les accords d’investissement sont présentés comme des structures juridiques qui n’opèrent que superficiellement à différents niveaux juridiques et dans différentes géographies. Le chapitre II se concentre dès lors sur le rôle que les cours « étrangères » ont pris dans la définition de la forme et des mécanismes de production à l’étranger. En adoptant une approche alliant le droit international privé et une analyse globale de la chaîne juridique, le chapitre examine l’Alien Tort Statute (ATS) comme un espace juridictionnel privilégié pour le contentieux en responsabilité. Enfin, le chapitre III s’attelle à montrer la complexité des chaînes globales de production afin de penser les formes redistributives que peut prendre l’intervention juridique. En particulier, le cas de la chaîne du « blood sugar », dont l’origine se trouve au Cambodge est utilisé comme un laboratoire pour une réflexion théorique. Celle-ci part par la reconnaissance que les changements de forme et de géographie de la production peuvent être obtenus par la redéfinition de structures juridiques qui ne sont pas directement en lien avec la situation examinée. Ainsi, les enclosures et évictions sont liés aux abus locaux ainsi qu’aux décisions de l’OMC, aux prêts accordés par des banques australiennes, à l’interprétation du droit de la responsabilité donné par les cours du Royaume-Uni ainsi qu’à une multitude d’autres facteurs juridiques. / Historically, land has been central to the construction of states, along with social distinctions and attributions of power that characterize each community. With different modalities and in different contexts, occupations, treaties and enclosures have shaped the political and legal structure of nations, including who owned the right to exclude and the territorial limits of authority. However, the interrelation between land, territory and global production has received little attention from legal scholars who are interested in the generation and distribution of value in contemporary supply chain capitalism.For the reasons mentioned above, I wrote this dissertation with the objective of exposing the role that law has in determining how land and territory are integrated in transnational capitalism, particularly when it comes to transforming them into sources of value that can be appropriated. According to the 'critical legal chain approach' that I explain in my work, law is not only a connector that allows intra-chain coordination between different hubs of the network but also a central element in the construction, reproduction and existence of each node of the chain and of the whole system of production. As a consequence, law deals with the allocation of bargaining power among the different actors at the micro-level (state, capital, labor) and is involved in the distribution of value and resources at the macro-level (throughout the chain). In Chapter I, the European Renewable Energy Directive, Bilateral Investment Treaties and investment agreements are presented as legal structures that are only superficially operating at different legal levels and in different geographies.Chapter II focuses on the role that 'foreign' courts have in defining the form and mechanisms of production elsewhere in the world. Adopting a combination of Private International Law and Global Value Chains analysis, the Chapter engages with the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) as a privileged jurisdictional space for transnational tort adjudication.Chapter III harnesses the complexity of global chains of production to think about alternative forms of redistributive legal intervention. In particular, the case of the 'blood sugar' chain originating in Cambodia is utilized as laboratory for a theoretical reflection that starts from the recognition that changes in the form and geographies of production can be obtained through the redefinition of legal structures not immediately related with the issue under investigation.

This thesis examines the position of the Czech power-engineering industry in the global market. The first aim of this thesis is to analyze the level of involvement of the Czech power-engineering firms into the GPN. The second goal is to discover to what extent the position of these firms depends on the quality of the regional innovation systems. It employs two relatively new concepts of the global production networks (GPN) and regional innovation systems (RIS) in order to reach its two main goals. The vast majority of the exemined power-engineering companies connected with global production networks and 12 of them are are identified as lead firms in GPN. Relatively very good positions of the Czech power-engineering firms in GPN caused by the industrial traditions of the Czech firms, the quality of the supporting industries and the presence of the global power- engineering TNCs in Czechia. Most of the companies supply equipment to others branches simultaneously with the power-engineering. The companies carrying out their own R&D&I activities bring the highest value to the industry. The results proved the assumption that the firms embedded in relatively more developed RISs usually enjoy higher positions in GPNs Key words: global production networks, regional innovation systems, Czechia

The problems of forced labour and degrading work persist within modern sectors of contemporary economies. This presents both a practical and a theoretical challenge, as reflected in the literature on new slavery and on unfree labour. Analysis of the production networks within which forced labour and degrading work are found, however, has yet to form a central theme within these bodies of literature. This thesis contributes to filling the above-mentioned gap in the literature by exploring the role of the labour dynamics of production networks in two cases of 'slave labour' in Brazil. The first case involves internal migrant workers in sugar cane while the second case involves cross-border migrants in garment workshops. The thesis addresses the question of whether, and how, the labour dynamics of production networks contribute to 'slave labour' and degrading work in the Brazilian sugar cane and garment sectors. The analysis is a cross-disciplinary one, rooted in development studies but also drawing on economic geography, sociology and economics. A case study method is used, relying principally on archival sources, a focus group and semi-stuctured interviews. Drawing on and developing the Global Production Network (GPN) framework, dynamics of production networks are conceived of as sets of power relations which structure the constraints and opportunities for the various actors who negotiate within them. These interlocking sets of relations include, among others: relations between workers, producers, suppliers, buyers, market intermediaries, civil society groups and the state. The labour dynamics of production networks are the subset of these dynamics involving or impacting relations between workers and employers and thereby structuring conditions of employment. Conditions of employment for migrant workers are examined in each case to show how these constitute 'slave labour.' Degrading conditions and restricted freedoms are found to exist to different degrees and along a number of dimensions. At the extreme, these conditions are labelled 'slave labour' in Brazil. It is argued that 'slave labour' in these cases is therefore a symptom of a wider problem of degrading work. The labour dynamics of production networks are analysed to reveal how producers at labour-intensive stages of production in both cases face increased levels of competition, and their strategies in response to these pressures intersect with the strategies of migrant workers and labour market intermediaries to produce outcomes of 'slave labour' and degrading work. Race, gender and migration status play a complex role in creating categories of workers vulnerable to degrading work and 'slave labour,' drawing attention to the way that production is necessarily embedded in particular socio-economic contexts. The analysis highlights the importance of accounting for and intervening in production networks within efforts to address 'slave labour' and degrading work.