Rise of offshoring services to developing countries has led to the participation of small offshoring services providers in the global value chains. Many inter-disciplinary researches have understood whether participation in global value chains (GVCs) leads to beneficial outcomes for small suppliers. However, the institutional dynamics that may hamper or support small supplier upgrading has not received much attention. This is especially true for small offshoring services providers (OSPs) who are operating in an adverse institutional environment represented by low quality institutions, political instability, and political conflicts. Taking an offshoring service provider’s (OSP) perspective, this paper aims to understand the how Pakistani OSPs bypass/address the challenges of upgrading and move to significant positions in global value chains. Anchoring this work in the relational economic geography, global value chain, and international business, an analytical framework is developed based upon three conceptual building blocks: Upgrading challenges, strategic responses, and upgrading. The thesis adopts qualitative interview technique to collect data from seventeen Pakistani OSPs. The textual data which is interpreted using template analysis technique shows that some Pakistani OSPs demonstrate ‘resilient’ strategies to upgrade in GVCs. The differences in the resilience of OSPs are dependent upon a) level of responsiveness of OSPs to cope with all or some of the upgrading challenges, b) to adapt the changing demands of GVCs. It is understood that OSPs showing high level of responsiveness and adaptation are able to truly upgrade in global value chain by gaining legitimacy in GVCs for their ability to successfully meet GVC conventions and legitimise operation in an adverse economy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:697746 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Choksy, Umair Shafi |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds