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Participation in global value chains (GVCs) is increasingly related to the economic growth of any country. The conceivable beneficial impact of GVCs on economic growth differs across countries and could be modified with the countries' domestic institutional arrangements. However, ignoring the complementarity between the components of institutional quality led to ignorance of the institutional imbalance present in the country. Hence, the primary purpose of this study is to examine the role of institutional imbalance as a moderating variable between GVC participation and economic growth from 2000 to 2018.

To address the issue of endogeneity among the variables in the model, the study employs the generalized methods of moments (GMM) as an econometric analysis method.

The study finds that well-functioning domestic institutions facilitate the positive impact of GVC participation on economic growth. Conversely, an increased institutional imbalance harms the relationship between GVC participation and economic growth. These findings emphasize a balanced portfolio of institutional components. It advocates the holistic development of each component to reap greater benefits for GVC participation for any country. The study highlights that the weakness in one of the components must be addressed rather than substituted by increasing the strength of another component.

The policies should be framed to improve the weakest component first, followed by other components of institutional quality. Simultaneous reforms involving all the dimensions of institutional quality would smoothen the path of transforming GVCs trade to the country's economic development. Additionally, the high institutional imbalance can provide a bird's eye view to policymakers to work on specific aspects of institutional quality more rigorously.

The existing literature has used a combined measure of institutional quality as a mediator variable while measuring the impact of GVC participation on economic growth. While using a combined measure, it ignores the complementarity among its components. Assuming substitutability among various components may lead to an incorrect estimation. Using the arguments proposed by Bolen and Sobel (2020), the present study considers the existence of complementarity among various components of institutional quality. It calculates the institutional imbalance used as a moderating variable while estimating the impact of GVC participation on economic growth.

This study aims to investigate two issues: (1) a nexus between climate-related financial policies (CRFP) and global value chains (GVC) and (2) the government’s policies to help countries enhance the efficient use of CRFP in improving a country’s likelihood to participate in GVC.

To investigate the connection between GVC and CRFP, the authors incorporate that backward participation is measured using foreign value-added, while domestic value-added is used to measure forward participation, quantified as proportions of gross exports. The study analyses yield significant insights across a span of 20 developing countries and 26 developed countries over the period from 2010 to 2020.

Regarding the first issue, the authors affirm the presence of a linear link between GVC and CRFP, implying that involvement in CRFP is advantageous for both backward and forward participation. Furthermore, the authors identify long-term GVC and CRFP cointegration and confirm its long-term effects. Notably, the expression of a linear relationship between GVC and CRFP appears to be stronger in developing countries.

The study findings, together with previous research, highlight the importance of financial policies relating to climate change (CRFP) in the context of economic growth. Climate change’s consequences for financial stability and GVC highlight the importance of expanded policymakers and industry participation in tackling environmental concerns.

Regarding the second issue, the study findings suggest critical policy implications for authorities by highlighting the importance of financial stability and expanded policymakers in promoting countries' participation in GVC.

This paper investigates the link between GVC performance and CRFP, offering three significant advances to previous research. Moreover, as a rigorous analytical method, this study adopts a typical error model with panel correction that accounts for cross-sectional dependency and stationarity.

Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) concept, research on its value-adding activities receives less attention. Thus, in this article, the authors investigate the role of EEs in supporting global value chain (GVC) activities.

The authors employ the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) technique to identify practical configurations of EE’s framework and systemic conditions spurring GVC activities in 80 countries.

The findings suggest different configurations of EE`s framework and systemic conditions necessary for various GVC activities regarding input-output structure, geographical scope, upgrading, and forward and backward participation.

This study contributes to the extant literature by pioneering the EE approach to explaining GVC development. Moreover, the findings provide novel insights for understanding the EE – GVC interplay. As a result, the study offers a more nuanced understanding of how the EE supports GVC activities.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this paper aims to analyse the relevance of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and participation in global value chains (GVC) and the effects of the complementarity between both in the adoption of circular economy (CE) actions by small and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

This paper analysed a large-scale international sample by employing logistic and linear regression models to test the research hypotheses on the effects of I4.0 technologies, GVC participation, and the interaction on CE actions (recycling or reusing materials, reducing the consumption and impact of natural resources, saving energy and/or switching to sustainable energy sources, developing sustainable products or services).

The evidence suggests that I4.0 technologies already represent important resources for CE adoption and SME participating in GVC display a greater likelihood of adopting CE actions. From the perspective of resource complementarity, by interacting the two factors viewed as resources in this article, results may report that adopting I4.0 technologies and simultaneously participating in GVC may turn out detrimental to SME undertaking CE actions, specifically as regards recycling and reusing materials, saving energy or switching to sustainable energy sources and in cases of widely adopting CE practices.

The paper returns novel insights into the adoption of CE practices by presenting evidence that I4.0 technologies and participation in GVC may be successful means for SME seeking to implement CE actions but must be combined carefully. This paper also provides theoretical and practical implications for SME managers, firms participating in GVCs and policy makers, and shedding light on new research avenues.

The discourse on global value chains (GVC) is undergoing a transformation in terms of its conceptualisation, theorisation and pragmatic applications. Today, the production systems have become more complex as global economic order continues to witness marked geo-economic manoeuvring. Thus, the direction of discourse on GVC ought to move from mere theoretical propositions toward becoming more evidence based. There have been recent studies that have used the governance and upgrading propositions by Gary Gereffi and others to seek quantitative evidence. This study aims to decipher the quantitative discourse on GVC and to set the emerging and future research agenda.

Through a systematic literature review, the authors first analyse the quantitative studies on GVC carried out during the last two decades. The authors then outline a future research agenda and examine a few relevant modelling techniques that could potentially be used to solicit newer evidence in GVC research.

The authors categorise the quantitative discourse on GVC into three crucial themes, namely, GVC framework, GVC participation and position, environmental aspects and regionalisation in GVC. The most commonly used quantitative techniques are gravity model, panel data estimation, structural decomposition analysis and computable general equilibrium modelling.

This paper contributes to the GVC discourse in two ways. Firstly, the authors argue that the theoretical frameworks within the GVC discourse should be complemented by evidence-based quantitative studies. Secondly, the authors suggest potential modelling techniques that can be used on the emerging and future research agenda.

In international business (IB), the discussion of COVID-19-related global value chain (GVC) models driving resilience has taken momentum since May 2020. The purpose of this study is to uncover insights that the pandemic provided as a unique research opportunity, holistically, revealing the significant role of non-lead firms in GVC outcomes and resilience. This allows to extend theory as the authors critically identify impact criteria and assess interdependence and valence, thus progressing the traditional (pre-pandemic) IB view of GVC governance and orchestration.

This study opts for an integrative review to help create a much-needed extension of IB theory by means of a critical perspective on GVC theory. The authors examine the extant body of IB literature as the relevant stock of collective IB knowledge prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, uncovering contributions – with a focus on the role of non-lead firms in orchestration and resilience – that allows to clarify what was not evident pre-pandemic. With this, the authors move the theory from its efficiency focus to a better recognition of the interdependencies of power and profit outcomes stemming from asymmetries of interrelationships. By design, the authors focus on the unique research period of the pandemic and orchestration complexities along the development of configurational arguments beyond simple correlations (Fiss, 2011), revealing key dependencies as key themes. The authors highlight further research avenues following Snyder (2019) that are called upon to strengthen that understanding and that helps extend theory.

This research provides a critical perspective on the application of the traditional IB views for GVC governance (designed for efficiency, cost and proximity to markets with pre-dominance for just in time), which has shifted during the pandemic to accommodate for adaptation and adjustment to resilience and just in case considerations. The holistic review reveals not only the key country- and multinational enterprise (MNE)-dependencies with residual impact determining the balance between just-in-time and just-in-case. Also, the authors advance the understanding of the (un)balance of the traditional GVC – focused on just-in-case rather than just-in-time through a lead and non-lead GVC participation and power lens yet rarely observed. The authors find that governance should not be construed as “management” such that it resolves into decisions undertaken in lead firms for execution in subordinate GVC participants. Autonomy allows to subsidiary units by MNE lead firms and/or exercised by (mainly, innovative) non-subsidiary GVC participant firms, is uncovered as a key driver in this. Greater delegation capacity appears to help provide resilience to loss in profit, with a recognition that there may be a dynamic trade-off between power and profit. In addition, the authors are able to identify correlations with innovation, demand elasticity, digital uptake, investment and other, that the authors trust will set the scene for additional research deepening and extending the findings.

Integrative literature reviews include a problem formulation (i.e. that is limited to published topics around an emerging theme) and are hence very focused in nature and approach. This applies to this paper. Data analysis in this method is not typically using statistical methods in contrast to meta-analyses. Also, the authors limit the sample to a relatively short time period with 33 publications analysed, purposefully focusing on the most prompt and “acute” insights into GVCs during the pandemic.

The traditional GVC governance model is designed for efficiency, cost and proximity to markets with pre-dominance for just in time. The authors reveal dependencies that are instrumental to better understand lead and non-lead interaction and relative autonomy, with a focus on residual impact determining the balance between just-in-time and just-in-case that, if in the sought equilibrium and agile, can allow alignment with context and this resilience. This paper specifically provides practical insights and visualization that highlights stages/“ripple” effects and their impact and the questions to ask as stakeholders look for GVC resilience. This includes, int.al., firms and their role as strategic agents, prompting participants through the learnings from exogenous shock to realign their strategies, redistributed manufacturing of production across subsidiary and non-subsidiary non-lead firms, greater competition and hence power for suppliers leveraging resilience and innovation, greater understanding of localization and regionalization of production of essential supplies, interaction with governments, and of investment impacts abroad especially to secure GVC participation.

The insights provided through this extension of theory with its literature review reveal the importance of aligning IB research into GVCs to factors that became visible through alternative or unusual settings, as they have the power to reveal the limitations of traditional views. In this case, a mainly efficiency-led, just-in-time focused GVC governance model is reviewed through the literature that emanated during the pandemic, with a critical perspective, which helped uncover and underline the complexities and evolution of GVC governance, providing fundamental support to solutioning the continuing global supply chain challenges that started as a result of the pandemic and are yet again accelerated by the Ukraine and Middle Eastern wars and its impact with, int.al., concerns over possible severe global food, labour/migration and resources crises. IB holds a social responsibility to help identify critical challenges from the disciplinary perspective and help advance resilience for social benefit.

This paper supports the original IB theory development by extending GVC theory into the lead – non-lead dynamics that may, under certain conditions, provide a “Resilience wall” for GVCs. The value created through insights stemming from a unique period of time for GVC is significant. It allows us thus also to pave the way to an emerging and critical research adaption looking into equilibrium, nuancing demand elasticity, better understanding trade and investment impacts along GVCs and more. By examining views on the sources of pandemic risks in a possibly unique setting, the authors offer added value from extant IB research insights by combining them, revealing the importance for GVCs to investigate not only key dependencies between the exogenous shock, i.e. context, and the impacts assessed through this literature but to further use their inherent value to create a framework for further conceptualization and extension of the traditional IB view on GVC governance. This work illustrates the urgency and importance for IB to take a timely and possibly more critical approach to the investigation of governance models that have, to date, shown some significant limitations.

The study aims to examine the joint effects of foreign ownership (FO) and involvement in global value chains (GVCs) on the productivity performance of firms from a catching-up country (Poland) and a leader economy (Germany).

The authors use micro-level data on firms combined with several sector-level GVC participation measures. The authors investigate whether the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership. The authors verify the robustness of the obtained results by using an instrumental variables approach and weighted regression.

The results show that domestically owned firms are less productive than foreign ones, which is particularly true at low GVC participation levels. However, as GVC involvement increases, the FO productivity premium decreases, leading to productivity catching up between foreign and domestically owned firms. This mechanism is similar in Poland and Germany. However, in the leader country (Germany), the productivity performance of domestically owned firms is more stable along the distribution of GVC involvement.

This study contributes to the foreign direct investment (FDI)–productivity literature by comparing the catching-up and developed countries' perspectives and incorporating the productivity–GVC relationship into the FDI analysis. The authors show that the FO premium is not confined to the developing context but is also present in a leader country. Moreover, the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership.

The focus is on determining the long-term relationship in explaining how technological capabilities interact with trade and global value chain (GVC) participation to aid in the upgradation process using a panel auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results suggest that export of both low-skill and medium-skill technology-intensive manufactures and patents by residents positively and significantly impact GVC participation.

This paper examines the dynamic linkages between GVC participation and technological capability of major Asian countries in a comparative (1995–2018) perspective.

This implies that certain sectors enable greater integration into GVCs in the long-run, supported by critical learning variables. Further, with the help of the panel causality test, a bi-directional flow between GVC participation and export of high-technology manufactures and import of labour-intensive technology manufactures is witnessed. Even a one-way flow from research and development (R&D) intensity to GVC participation is seen.

The technological capabilities are found to be characterising the initial structure of local enterprises in trade and GVCs, as well as the extent to which emerging-market firms may harness knowledge flows and migrate into high-tech industries.

Using the Shanghai pilot free trade zone (SPFTZ) as the testing ground for further reform and opening up,the links between global value chain (GVC) and pilot free trade zone (PFTZ) programs are mutually reinforcing. GVC creates opportunities for companies to use PFTZ to reduce their costs and increase their competitiveness, while PFTZ can facilitate the movement of goods within GVC and promote the development of GVC by attracting foreign investment. Overall, in SPFTZ, the industrial structure is promoted due to trade and investment facilitation, innovation promotion, and comprehensive service platform inside SPFTZ.

This study examined industrial upgrading in GVC (IUGVC) using five indicators under three quantitative dimensions: product, process, and skill upgrading. Difference-in-Differences (DID) model is employed for the impact assessment of SPFTZ. Parallel trend analysis and Granger causality analysis are performed to check the reliability of DID outcome. Finally, robustness test using exogenous control variables are carried out.

A positive impact of SPFTZ is found on IUGVC, which is due to promoting effect of SPFTZ on foreign direct investment and technological innovation. Based on the study's findings, policy recommendations are given, such as providing business support to enterprises operating inside a PFTZ.

From a GVC perspective, the impact of theSPFTZ establishment on IUGVC cannot be ignored, and is so far missing in the literature.

The study evaluates the effects of GVC participation on firm productivity and profitability. Hence this study aims to find evidence whether there is a clear difference between the productivity and profitability effects of simple and complex backward and forward participations for Turkish firms.

The authors employ a firm level data from the Türkiye's both first and second top 500 industrial enterprises from 1993 to 2019. In addition, the authors calculate country-sector level both backward and forward GVC participation indices with their simple and complex sub-indices for each year from 1990 to 2015 from the Full Eora data of the Eora Global Supply Chain Database. The authors estimate the model with OLS and fixed effects. To understand the role of the 2008 global crisis, the authors also undertake estimations for the pre-crisis and post-crisis. The authors also divide the data by R&D intensity of sectors.

While backward GVC participation lowers both labor productivity and profitability growth, forward GVC participation promotes both. Moreover, simple and complex backward participation have similarly negative effects on productivity and profitability growth, simple and complex forward participation have the completely opposite effects though. The authors then provide substantial evidence for the differing effects of participation on productivity and profitability growth between pre-crisis and post-crisis periods. Interestingly, backward participation has a negative impact for both hi-tech and low-tech firms while forward participation boosts the productivity growth only for low-tech firms, probably due to the relatively more upstream position of low-tech firms.

To the best of the knowledge, no previous study has yet examined the profitability effects of GVC for firms. Second, in addition to overall backward and forward GVC participation rates, the authors also calculate and utilize simple and complex GVC measures in the estimations. Third, to reveal whether the global financial crisis leads to a shift in the productivity and profitability effects of GVCs, the authors separately run the regressions for the pre- and post-crisis periods. Fourth, the authors then investigate the argument that hi-tech sectors/firms could benefit more from joining GVCs compared to firms in low-tech technology sectors.