<p>This dissertation studies coordination mechanism design for sustainable supply networks in a globalized environment, with the goal of achieving long-term profitability, environmental friendliness and social responsibility. We examine three different types of supply networks in detail.</p><p>The first network consists of one supplier and multiple retailers. The main issue is how to efficiently share a scarce resource, such as capacities for green technology, among all members with private information under dynamically changing environment. We design a shared surplus supply agreement among the members which can lead to both efficient private investments and efficient capacity allocation under unpredictable and unverifiable market conditions.</p><p>The second network is a serial supply chain. The source node provides critical raw material (like coffee cherries) for the entire chain and is typically located in an underdeveloped economy, the end node is a retailer serving consumer at a developed economy (like Starbucks Co.). We construct a dynamic supply agreement that takes into account the changing market and production conditions to ensure fair compensations so that the partners have the right incentives to work together to develop sustainable quality supply.</p><p>The third network is a stylized global production network of a multinational company consisting of a home plant and a foreign branch. The branch serves the foreign market but receives a key component from the home plant. The distinctive feature is that both facilities belong to the same company, governed by the headquarters, yet they each also have their own autonomies. We analyze the role of the headquarters in designing coordination mechanism to improve efficiency. We show the headquarters can delegate the coordination effort to the home plant, as long as it keeps veto power.</p> / Dissertation

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The 1996 Singapore Ministerial Declaration refocused attention in the international community on the idea of non-reciprocal system of trade preferences as a means of development assistance. Authors of the initiative had hoped that such policy would among others, help promote industrial exports and facilitate sustainable development in developing countries. However, this happened against the background that previous schemes could not be particularly associated with any form of sustainable export successes that were usually contemplated and expected from beneficiaries. In view of the developmental implications of this renewed focus, the imperativeness of an reconsideration of the economics of the programme cannot be overemphasized. While extant trade preference studies have made important contributions to our understanding of their effectiveness, the limited focus of research on direct impact like, static increases in exports, foreign direct investment (FDI) and employments does not seem to provide satisfactory assessment. Very often, the expected indirect or dynamic impact on productivity improvements needed to strengthen competitive capacities and make gains (export performance) sustainable is neglected. In this study an attempt is made to address this issue. The main objective of the research is therefore to analyse the relationship between nonreciprocal system of trade preferences and industrial export performance sustainability in beneficiary countries. This is accomplished by utilising a new analytical insight from the global production network literature. The advantages of this analytical departure lie not just in the fact that it allows us to accommodate the dynamic dimension of impact assessment into the study framework, but also helps reflect the concerns of globalisation advocates in the contemporary analysis of development issues. These advocates argue that research on economic development in general and industrial development in particular in the new era of global capitalism must as a matter of necessity, be informed by the literature on globalisation. After conceptualising an analytical model which has both static and dynamic dimension, it is then applied and tested for the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Trade Initiative of 2000. Lesotho’s apparel export under the scheme serves as the case study for this investigation. Results of the econometric estimation for the static impact assessment reveal that AGOA has been effective in stimulating Lesotho apparel exports to the US market. The dynamic impact assessment dimension is carried out within the context of the debate on economic growth and convergence. Specifically, it is argued that the conditions necessary for export performance to be sustainable require that national social-capability in a beneficiary economy be adequate and sufficient. The estimated regression confirms this hypothesis for the reference case study. Overall, the dissertation has shown that research in economics can benefit from analytical insights borrowed from other disciplines. More important however, is the study’s contribution to the trade policy debate on the impact of trade preferences on export development. On one hand, the static impact analysis addresses a key gap in existing works which seems to place so much emphasis on aggregated national level data and cross-country regression as bases for empirical evidence. By utilising disaggregated firm level data for a specific country, analysis here finds relevance in the continuing policy debate on trade preference impact assessment. On the other hand, the dynamic aspect of the analytical model has not only helped us to shift the frontier of knowledge beyond its current static boundary, but also to inform the debate on economic growth and convergence. As efforts to unravel the puzzle over the non-convergence of cross-country growth performances continue to flourish, findings here lend credence to the hypothesis that social capability matters for economic performance of nations.

The automotive industry is one of the most important industries in the Czech Republic. This diploma thesis identifies its main characteristics and assesses its impact on regional competitiveness. The hypothesis tested in the practical section of this thesis is that suppliers producing high value-added products contribute to regional competitiveness more than suppliers of simple products. A review of relevant theories provides a sound reasoning to support this hypothesis. An analysis of available data from the Czech Republic, however, leads to a rejection of this hypothesis as the results from the practical part signalise that in the Czech Republic the impact of suppliers of simple products is higher than the impact of high value-added suppliers.

This paper will examine the economic and geographical analysis of companies in the manufacturing industry, located in the South Bohemia region. The theoretical concept chosen to examine this paper will be the Global Production Networks (GPN). This is used for the comparison of states and firms in the world economy. A decision was made to select a quantitative approach of studying selected GPNs. The subject area is to, analyse the economic activity and their results of 11 groups of companies according to their position in the GPN in reference to their hierarchy, ownership, function and size. Three data indicators will be used to support this analysis, Returns on Assets (ROA), Wages to Turnover (WTT) and Capital Expenditures to Turnover (CTT). This paper will find out which company type produces the best results and which can positively affect local development. This paper will also explore if there is any pattern on location, company category and its economical results. Key words: global production networks, manufacturing industry, South Bohemia, economical structure

The global economy infuses every aspect of our day to day lives, from the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to our political choices. And with its ability to “mutate, shudder and shatter” (Dicken et al), the unpredictable ruptures associated with the global economy elude our ability to grasp its impact and to govern its activities. So how, as citizens, do we imagine governing ourselves when ‘nobody appears to be in charge any longer’? How does our understanding of the state apparatuses– the legislation, regulations, policies –speak to people’s day to day experience in their communities? This research addresses two broad questions: how are communities responding to externally generated ruptures and how do they govern themselves in response? I propose that responding coherently to rupture events is inhibited by community members’ lack of awareness of the complex interrelationships of the constituent elements of the economy, and secondarily, a tendency to see the state as the primary site of governance. Through interviews, surveys, and documentary research, this interdisciplinary study (political science, human geography, sociology and history) examines how three British Columbia communities – Tumbler Ridge, Tofino and Gabriola Island – were affected by recessionary ruptures and how they responded. Each of these communities exists within Indigenous spaces. Understanding how communities perceived their relationships with their Indigenous neighbours grounds the stories within the historical impacts of colonization, although it is not part of this thesis to investigate both sides of the ‘settler’-Indigenous relationship in these communities. By telling the story of each community’s response to rupture over time and comparing their trajectories, I draw conclusions comparing each community’s response and the outcomes. I pursue four areas of investigation: the degree to which communities understood their relationship with what I call the “capital economy” and others refer to as the market or capitalist economy, and how that understanding affected their response to rupture; how attitudes toward place shaped community responses to rupture; how community perceptions about their local economies affected the decisions they made and the strategies they employed to address economic and social challenges; and how the deployment of governance at various scales impacted the socio-economic health of the communities. The communities embraced a range of strategies from individual autonomous action, to networked autonomous action, to the creation of place-based governance entities as sites for action. Their effectiveness was determined by three factors. First of these is the degree to which communities saw the state as the locus of political action and the market economy as the primary agent for achieving community health and wellbeing had consequences for life control, self-determination and self-governance. Second is the extent to which the community was willing to work outside of the normative governance structures (normative in the sense that the state and corporate decision-making are commonly accepted as the primary and proper sources of governance and problem-solving) affected their ability to consider and create adaptive strategies that could respond to the unpredictable mutations of global capital. Finally, the failure in some communities to understand the ongoing impacts of colonization hampered their ability to create meaningful and ultimately productive relationships with their Indigenous neighbours, relationships that may have opened up valuable avenues to the wellbeing of all parties. I conclude that effective governance strategies capable of seeing communities through unpredictable ruptures will require five capacities: building on deeply situated knowledge; developing relationships across interests and social strata; employing ‘loose’ structure strategies; adopting approaches based on incremental persistence; and learning from Indigenous self-governance aspirations. Developing these local capacities will lay the foundation for a broader scope of political action. / Graduate

No description available.

This dissertation consists of three closely related essays on upgrading in agro-commodity value chains, which is an important issue for many developing countries that produce and export commodities in mostly unprocessed form. The essays are based on fieldwork in Malaysia and focus on its palm oil, which is the world’s largest oils and fats product by production and export volumes. The first essay examines the suitability of vertical specialisation for participation and upgrading in agro-commodity value chains based on the case of Malaysian palm oil. It uses data from interviews, site visits, and industry and economic statistics to analyse upgrading at the sector and firm levels. The essay suggests that upgrading is prone to sectoral linkage development and vertical integration at local lead firms. The development is driven by production characteristics, sectoral dynamics, eco-historical settings that are unique to agro-commodity value chains, as well as firm motives seeking resources, markets, efficiency gains, and strategic assets. The second essay studies Malaysia’s industrial policy for its palm oil sector through three distinct stages of development. The findings show that resource-based industrialisation (RBI) requires selective state intervention targeting macroeconomic conditions, infrastructure, business climate, and human capital. The Malaysian experience also highlights the importance of local firms in driving RBI investments, contrary to the emphasis in the literature which either overplays the importance of foreign linkages or dismisses nationality of firms as a non-factor for industrialisation. The third essay investigates economic and social outcomes from upgrading in the Malaysian palm oil sector using gross value added data. It shows that economic upgrading can but does not automatically lead to social upgrading. The essay finds that economic upgrading in value chains improves income of groups of individuals at different rates depending on their position in the value chains. Skills and productivity performance provide only partial explanation for the uneven social outcomes; the differences in institutional arrangements and political representation accorded to the groups are likely to be important factors as well.

Ο σκοπός της παρούσας εργασίας αφορά ένα αντικείμενο που έχει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον στην οικονομική αγορά, την τεχνολογική εξέλιξη και τα Διεθνή Δίκτυα Παραγωγής. Το πρώτο μέρος της εργασίας αφορά στο θεωρητικό πλαίσιο ώστε να γίνει κατανοητός ο όρος Διεθνών Δικτύων Παραγωγής και γενικότερα τα χαρακτηριστικά, τα πλεονεκτήματα και τα επιμέρους τμήματα που τα αποτελούν. Επίσης αναφέρεται η άμεση σχέση των δικτύων με το Κράτος , το ανθρώπινο δυναμικό καθώς και οι άμεσες επιπτώσεις από την ανάπτυξη των δικτύων δηλαδή την διάχυση της τεχνολογίας και της γνώσης. Τέλος, η μελέτη ολοκληρώνεται με την αναφορά μιας μελέτης περίπτωσης για το κλάδο της αυτοκινητοβιομηχανίας γενικότερα, και ειδικότερα στην Ταϊλάνδη. / The purpose of this work it refers to a subject that has a particular interest in the financial market, technological progress and Global Production Networks. The first part of this project concerns the theoretical framework to understand the term of Global Production Networks and general characteristics, advantages and the individual parts that a network includes. Also, the networks are directly connected with the State, the human resources and the direct impact of the development of networks in the diffusion of technology and knowledge. Finally, the study concludes with a report of a case study for the automotive industry in general and particularly in Thailand.

The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to a better understanding of highly skilled (re-)migrants as labour force in multinational enterprises (MNEs) and their role in cross-border knowledge transfers. To achieve this goal, an actor-centred research perspective will be adopted, which allows for a detailed examination of both individual employees and strategies of MNEs. The basic conceptual understanding of this work is based on the relational economic-geographical approach (Bathelt and Glückler 2002), on the basis of which research strands and theories of economic geography, international business studies and migration studies were intertwined. The empirical study is based on the example of highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin who work for German companies in Turkey. The study focuses on (re-)migrants of Turkish origin who have obtained a university degree in Germany. The study follows a qualitative research design based on 95 semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with highly skilled (re-)migrants as well as with company internal and external experts. In addition to the semi-structured interviews, a netnographic collection of data from an online group for (re-)migrants of Turkish origin is conducted. The findings of this thesis show that highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin who have obtained a university degree in Germany are not to be regarded as a homogeneous group but rather have diverse educational and career paths. In addition to their high level of education, they have excellent language skills (mostly Turkish, German and English). They are also mostly familiar with the cultural and institutional contexts in Germany and Turkey, which, according to Hess (2004), is referred to as dual societal embeddedness. Highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin are important transnational experts for German companies in Turkey. They are particularly in demand if the companies 1) have a strong orientation towards German-speaking markets and/or 2) are dependent on close cooperation with German company locations. In these companies, highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin are strategically deployed in central areas of the company, where they often work at interfaces due to their transnational abilities, which require close contact with local employees and employees of German company locations. The empirical results also show that highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin make a significant contribution to the cross-border knowledge transfers in German companies in Turkey. Highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin are primarily involved in intra-organisational knowledge transfer with employees of German company locations. Due to their dual societal embeddedness and their profound language skills, highly skilled (re-)migrants are able to bridge the institutional distance between German and Turkish company locations. This is particularly important for the transfer of implicit knowledge, which is based on know-how and experience and is therefore difficult to transfer between different cultural and institutional contexts. In concrete terms, highly skilled (re-)migrants of Turkish origin facilitate cross-border knowledge transfers through three main activities: building knowledge networks, mediating frictions, transmitting knowledge. The results of a case study also show that highly skilled (re-)migrants can play a decisive role in the offshoring of knowledge intensive business services within global production networks Thereby, highly skilled (re-)migrants help to mitigate resistance and facilitate the dis- and re-embedding of knowledge within the offshoring process. Overall, this thesis contributes to the geographical (re-)migration research, to research on the geography of knowledge in MNEs, and to global production network research.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2018-07-23T11:50:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 inaciofernandesdearaujojunior.pdf: 3989534 bytes, checksum: efdd8fd98640b17dd2720d5074098e7c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-09-03T16:18:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 inaciofernandesdearaujojunior.pdf: 3989534 bytes, checksum: efdd8fd98640b17dd2720d5074098e7c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-03T16:18:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 inaciofernandesdearaujojunior.pdf: 3989534 bytes, checksum: efdd8fd98640b17dd2720d5074098e7c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-06-22 / A intensificação da fragmentação internacional das cadeias de produção alterou a estrutura do comércio bilateral nas últimas décadas. A terceirização internacional e a especialização dos países nas cadeias de produção verticalmente integradas são determinantes dessa fragmentação. A terceirização internacional está relacionada à decisão das empresas em realizar parte dos estágios produtivos no exterior. A especialização vertical é definida pela interconexão dos processos de produção em uma cadeia de comércio vertical e sequencial, que se estendem por diferentes países especializados em estágios específicos da produção. No cenário de especialização vertical torna-se necessário diferenciar o comércio bruto e o comércio de valor adicionado para identificar a contribuição de cada país na produção global. Nesse contexto, a tese de doutorado investigou os determinantes da fragmentação internacional em relação à posição que as indústrias ocupam nas cadeias de produção e às medidas não-tarifárias de restrição de acesso aos mercados. O estudo usou uma base de dados construída a partir das matrizes inter-regionais de insumo-produto no âmbito global. A análise de insumo-produto mensurou o valor adicionado estrangeiro na produção e identificou a extensão geográfica das cadeias globais de valor. As medidas de especialização vertical, calculadas na abordagem de insumo-produto, rastrearam todos os encadeamentos produtivos por meio da estrutura de interdependência industrial. Desse modo, essa análise contabilizou a participação direta e indireta de cada país na produção global, considerando todos os estágios das cadeias globais. O estudo possibilitou compreender a inserção nas cadeias de valor em diferentes dimensões das redes globais de produção. Os principais resultados também mostram que as medidas nãotarifárias representam restrições importantes ao comércio de valor adicionado. Assim, embora a economia global tenha intensificado a fragmentação internacional das cadeias de produção, impulsionada dentre outros fatores pela redução tarifária, a adoção de medidas não-tarifárias dificulta a inserção dos países em estágios específicos dessas cadeias globais de produção. / The intensification of international fragmentation of production chains has altered the structure of bilateral trade in recent decades. The outsourcing and the specialization of countries in vertically integrated production chains determine this fragmentation. Outsourcing is related to the companies decision to carry out stages of the production abroad. Vertical specialization is defined by the interconnection of the production in a vertical and sequential chain of trade, which extends itself across different countries that specialize in specific stages of the production. In the vertical specialization scenario, it is necessary to differentiate the gross and value-added trade to identify the contribution of each country in the global production. In this context, the doctoral thesis investigated the determinants of international fragmentation by the position of industries in the production chains and the non-tariff measures restricting access to markets. The study used a database built from interregional input-output tables at global level. The input-output analysis measured foreign value added in production and identified the geographic extent of the global value chains. Vertical specialization measures, calculated in the input-output approach, tracked all productive linkages through the structure of industrial interdependence. Thus, this analysis counted the direct and indirect participation of each country in the global production, considering all the stages of the global chains. The study made it possible to understand the insertion in the value chains in different dimensions of the global production networks. The main results also show that the non-tariff measures are restrictions on the trade in value added. Therefore, the global economy has intensified the international fragmentation of production chains, driven, among other factors, by the reduction of tariffs, but the adoption of the non-tariff measures has made it difficult for countries to enter specific stages of these global production chains.