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.

Manufacturing activities in the personal computer industry are organised in a complex global production network (GPN) led by a variety of branded global lead firms. Increasingly, considerations on environmental, health and safety governance have emerged as an important element to the management and co-ordination of these production networks by lead firms. Within the personal computer GPN, the printed circuit board (PCB) industry is commonly subcontracted by branded firms to suppliers located in developing countries such as Penang, Malaysia. The activities of PCB manufacturing and assembly involve the use of various hazardous chemicals that pose environmental health risks to workers. This research aims to understand how governance over environmental health is implemented in the GPN led by Hewlett Packard (HP) and in particular with lower tier suppliers in the printed circuit board industry in Penang, Malaysia. The main research question is: how are environmental health concerns managed by governance mechanisms in GPNs that involve the relocation of harmful manufacturing activities to developing countries? Governance mechanisms within the GPN include private standards and codes of conduct, which are supplemented by government regulation in the host country. Governance outcomes are shaped by relations between firms and non-firm actors such as government agencies, civil society organisations and trade unions. Therefore, a GPN analytical framework is utilised to understand more specifically how a variety of firm and non-firm actors and their relationships and power dynamics influence governance practices in the industry. Fieldwork for the research was conducted in 2008 and 2010 and consisted of semi-structured in-person and telephone interviews with thirty seven key actors in Malaysia, Western Europe, and the United States. Key informants included HP; first tier suppliers to HP and second tier suppliers located in Penang, Malaysia; global and Malaysian civil society organisations; an international federation of trade unions and Malaysian trade unions; Malaysian government agencies; and a politician, occupational health doctor and journalist in Penang. The findings from this research show that a combination of factors results in a weak scenario for governing environmental health risks of suppliers in Penang. These factors are resource constraints among suppliers; weak host country capacity and willingness to regulate; weak knowledge of environmental health risks by firms and regulatory agencies; and weak contestation by external stakeholders. Findings from the analysis also show the need to have differentiated views of power amongst different actor relationships in order to understand the complexity of GPN governance.

Yes / Incorporating the global production network approach and competitor analysis, this paper establishes an analytical framework with two hypotheses for the role of foreign multinational enterprises (FMNEs) in indigenous firms’ exports and domestic sales. First, the presence of FMNEs as a whole is likely to have a negative impact on indigenous firms’ domestic sales but a simultaneous positive impact on their exports in an emerging economy like China. Second, the presence of MNEs from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (HMT MNEs) is more likely to generate this pattern of impact than MNEs from other countries (Other FMNEs). The FDI-led export strategy contributed to the dominance of the scenario described by the first hypothesis in China, while a higher degree of market commonality and resource similarity of HMT MNEs with that of indigenous Chinese firms than Other FMNEs leads to the second hypothesis. These novel hypotheses are tested and supported by a very large and recent firm-level panel dataset from Chinese manufacturing.

The thesis deals with the analysis of Nachod and Tachov regions' economic structure. The aim of this work is to discover the range and character of differences between these regional economic structures within a national innovation system. Regions showing approximately similar vertical geographic position were chosen for the analysis deliberately, however they differ in various actualities, such as, for instance, their position in terms of west-east gradient, or more precisely horizontal geographic position. Based on the analysis of the relationship between the suppliers and consumers, manufacturing programmes, and not least ownership structures, the basic typology of the economic subjects from the manufacturing industry was executed. The results of this analysis point out significant dependence of the Tachov region on the activities of foreign investors and underdeveloped entrepreneurial environment. Nachod region reports, in the interregional comparison, better results in assessing the economic structure and features clearly more endogenous regional development than Tachov region. Key words: global production network, regional innovation system, manufacturing industry, economic structure

<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.

This cumulative dissertation presents an environmental economic geography approach to the study of waste and recycling. Thereby, it introduces the notion of ‘waste economies’, which describes the conjunction of the production of waste with the societal handling as well as the valorisation of waste. Two distinct regional case studies serve to illustrate different aspects of waste economies. The first case investigates the valorisation of surplus manure from intensive livestock farming through biogas production in a highly industrialized rural region in north-western Germany – the example of manure and digestate in the Oldenburger Münsterland. The second case focuses on the recovery and revalorisation of wasted materials in the labour-intensive urban informal economy of a metropolitan area in eastern India – the example of informal plastic recycling networks in Kolkata. On a theoretical level, the conceptualization of waste economies is located at the intersection of environmental economic geography and the interdisciplinary field of waste studies. It draws on the global production networks approach, social metabolism and Marxist political economy to analyse waste as a form of ‘hybrid’ socio-nature. Following a qualitative research methodology, the analysis of the two cases depicts the close entanglement of economic and environmental processes in the production, societal handling and economic valorisation of waste, and reveals how this intersection is conducive for capital accumulation. Three different economic processes and dynamics serve as central analytical dimensions to delineate the characteristics of waste economies with regard to the expanded reproduction of capital accumulation, that is, the continued growth of capitalist economies: processes of externalisation as well as dynamics of expansion and intensification. Through the combined up-scaled analysis of two empirical cases on a higher level of theoretical abstraction, this dissertation offers a better understanding of the economic function of waste in growth-oriented capitalist economies. In this way, it contributes to the global recycling network and global destruction network approaches within economic geography and relates them to scholarly concerns about global environmental change.