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Tourism value chain (TVC) analysis has been widely used as an alternative approach for designing sustainable and inclusive programs for tourism development in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. This chapter looks at the experiences of three sustainable tourism initiatives in the Philippines to assess the strengths and limitations of the value chain as a framework for destination development. Short case studies describe the experiences of stakeholders in two popular destinations in the Philippines: the surfing town of San Juan, La Union, and the resort-island of Panglao, Bohol. The third case study shares the perspective of the Transforming the Tourism Value Chain (TTVC) project, a national campaign for more sustainable hotels, resort as well as meetings, conventions, incentives, and event (MICE) facilities in various destinations around the country. Stakeholders deeply involved in implementing these projects share their insights on the successes, challenges, and limitations of TVC-based approaches to resilient and sustainable destination development. The destinations' experiences suggest that the advocacy for sustainable management and operations may be comparable to a process of technology adoption or acceptance along the TVC. Practical and theoretical recommendations for leveraging the TVC toward more holistic and sustainable visitor economies are given at the end of this chapter.

The sustainability performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is often judged from their participation in distinct sustainability standards initiatives. But MNEs interact with a variety of sustainability standards in their value chains. This chapter proposes a partnering-intensity continuum to categorize the MNE–standards interactions to explore the benefits of a more firm-based approach for the assessment of MNEs’ contributions to sustainability.

The chapter describes standardization in coffee and biofuels industries and presents the case of a single firm to compose a continuum that reflects how MNEs move between standards attached to operations of single firms, bilateral arrangements with certification schemes, and multistakeholder partnerships. It elaborates this observed continuum by linking international business (IB) literature with the literature on global value chains (GVCs) and partnerships.

Choices about how to partner in and how to handle control over the implementation of standards shape the contributions MNEs make to sustainable development. Specifying how MNEs interact with different standards, with varying degrees of partnering and combined logics, is proposed as a better way to assess how MNEs contribute to sustainable development compared to evaluating standards per se.

This chapter draws attention to the phenomenon that international “lead firms” engage with a variety of standards. The chapter proposes that looking at partnering intensity and the subsequent level of influence over the implementation of standards enables assessing how and to what extent lead firms contribute to addressing sustainability problems.

One of the most important economic processes in the world economy over the recent decades has been increasing fragmentation of international production that resulted in expansion of global value chains (GVCs). National economies started to get involved in GVCs in order to get value-added gains from this participation; Russia is not an exception. To analyze Russia’s GVCs participation, we need to adopt new statistical methodology based on input–output approach that allows estimating trade flows in terms of value added, including foreign and domestic value added as parts of gross exports. The author comes to the conclusion that Russia’s participation in GVCs was growing during the last decades mostly by forward participation connected with supply of oil and gas along GVC; moreover, Russia had net gains from this participation. Future trends in Russia’ involvement in GVCs can be described by two scenarios. The first one is based on expanding forward manufacturing participation in order to increase and diversify nonoil exports. This scenario is strongly supported by Russian Federation Ministry for Economic Development. The second scenario covers the continuation of mineral participation in GVCs that Russia implements till now. Both scenarios have their pro and contra. The author argues that the first scenario is better correlated with long-term economic interests and possibilities for sustainable development in Russia.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

Managing diversity requires an understanding of culture. The majority of businesses have realised that competitiveness no longer stems from formal organisational structures but rather from the mindsets, competencies, and functioning of individuals who create, develop, and support the organisation and who frequently come from different cultural backgrounds. Understanding the essence of a culture, its components, variations, and how all these things effect the business and the managerial process is very beneficial for international managers. Businesses in global value chains need cross-cultural management practices to obtain a competitive advantage. Global value chains make it possible to benefit from the comparative advantages of other nations, and without cross-cultural management, these multinational corporations would be unable to carry on with their business operations. Although there are many explanations on global value chains in the literature, there is no study on the effect of different cultures in value chain management and how different cultures can be managed in global value chains.

In this chapter, the definition of the concept of culture, which is comprehensive and crucial in managing differences, will be depicted. Then, the concept of cross-cultural management will be emphasised and what cross-cultural management means and why and to what extent it is important will be explained. In addition, the impact of cross-cultural management in the inclusive global value chain will be discussed, emphasising the value chain analysis, how it emerged, its basic concepts, and its importance in the international context.

The purpose of this research is to understand how power relations in global value chains (GVCs) shape the upgrading of offshoring service providers (OSPs). More specifically, the chapter addresses two questions: (1) How power asymmetry in GVC shapes the upgrading prospects for OSPs? and (2) How OSPs manage the power asymmetry in GVC and upgrade to a more favorable position?

The context for this study is the software value chain. Drawing upon relational economic geography and GVC literature, we build an analytical framework based on three conceptual building blocks: client power, upgrading, and upgrading practices. Based on the analytical framework and in-depth interviews, we design a case study of one OSP in the Pakistani software industry, referred to as OSP#A.

The findings reveal that GVCs exercise a high level of power on OSPs. This power is exercised through enforcing certain conditions to participate and coordinate in GVCs. However, it is found that OSP#A is not passive recipient of these demands. Instead, it actively manages the power asymmetry through building practices to adapt and collaborate in GVCs and attain relational proximity.

The chapter highlights the significance of upgrading practices and conceptualizing upgrading as a process of improving relational power in GVCs by attaining relational proximity.

Socio-economic shocks have been the sources of burden to smallholder farmers, and the recent COVID-19 pandemics, can be termed a shock that could lead to distortions in the operations of the commodity value chain. The study, therefore, examined the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on income and access to economic input such as labour, seeds, fertilisers, herbicides, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was carried out in Kano State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed in the selection of 260 respondents comprising producers (115), marketers (60), processors (46) and transporters (29). Primary data were collected from stakeholders in tomato value chain through the use of a structured questionnaire. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings revealed that tomato value chain in Kano State, Nigeria, is male-dominated. The average age of stakeholders ranged between 43 years (transporters) and 51 years (processors). Results further revealed a significant relationship in income of marketers' pre- and during COVID-19 pandemic. However, non-significant relationship was observed in the income of producers, processors and transporters prior and during COVID-19 pandemic. There was also no significant difference in the economic value of seeds, manure and fertiliser before and during COVID-19 pandemic. The most important constraints to the producers were the high cost of farm chemical procured while the marketers were confronted with high cost of transportation. The processors were faced with high processing cost and transporters experienced request for undue levies by market authorities. The study recommends that mechanism be devised to improve availability of inputs to producers and dissemination of adequate market information to stakeholders in the tomato value chain regularly to improve contribution of the commodity to food security and economic development.

Food fraud as intentional deception for economic gain relies on a low-tech food value chain, that applies a ‘paper-and-pencil approach’, unable to provide reliable and trusted data about food products, accompanied processes/activities and actors involved. Such approach has created the information asymmetry that leads to erosion of stakeholders and consumers trust, which in turn discourages cooperation within the food chain by damaging its ability to decrease uncertainty and capability to provide authentic, nutritional, accessible and affordable food for all. Lack of holistic approach, focus on stand-alone measures, lack of proactive measures and undermined role of customers have been major factors behind weaknesses of current anti-fraud measures system. Thus, the process of strong and fast digitalisation enabled by the new emerging technology called Industry 4.0 is a way to provide a shift from food fraud detection to efficient prevention. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to shed light on current challenges and opportunities associated with Industry 4.0 technology enablers' guardian role in food fraud prevention with the hope to inform future researchers, experts and decision-makers about opportunities opened up by transforming to new cyber-physical-social ecosystem, or better to say ‘self-thinking’ food value chain whose foundations are already under development. The systematic literature network analysis is applied to fulfil the stated objective. Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 can be used to develop a system that is cost effective and ensures data integrity and prevents tampering and single point failure through offering fault tolerance, immutability, trust, transparency and full traceability of the stored transaction records to all agri-food value chain partners. In addition, such approach lays a foundation for adopting new business models, strengthening food chain resilience, sustainability and innovation capacity.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the agri-food sector are continuously transforming their global value chains (GVCs) to address sustainable development challenges of food security (SDG2) and climate change (SDG13). However, the central role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in (re)creating GVCs across multilevel stakeholders through innovative approaches to solve sustainability challenges remains under investigated. This explorative study investigates how international NGOs influence the transformation of large-scale industrial animal agriculture to a more sustainable (cell-based) agri-food GVC. The authors conducted a case study on the Good Food Institute (GFI), an international NGO, that has been an active player in the transition to alternative sources of protein to solve animal-based agriculture sustainability issues. The results show that an international NGO can contribute to the transition to a more sustainable GVC and can enhance the GVC’s innovation capabilities.

Purpose – This study attempts to explore further the relation between performance information and trust as the main control levers in inter-firm transactional relationships.

Design/methodology/approach – After discussing the interaction between information and trust from different theoretical perspectives, the study examines the case of a multinational company working in the pharmaceutical industry. Material has been collected through interviews with managers and documental analyses, focusing on the relations between the company and its partner suppliers.

Findings – A theoretical systematisation is provided, distinguishing three main perspectives: (1) the transactional perspective, strictly derived from transaction cost economics assumptions, which denies any role to trust; (2) the relational perspective, which, in examining inter-firm trust, assumes similarities with inter-personal trust; (3) the institutional perspective, which, based on the sociological distinction of “trust in abstract systems” and “trust in persons”, is intended to identify institutional factors explaining management accounting changes. Case discussion shows that the institutional propositions fit the empirical evidence better, for both trust in persons and in systems are important as control levers, but their relevance differs along the value chain: while trust in persons is more relevant in the less-programmable phases, trust in systems is more developed in the more programmable one.

Research implications – The paper contributes to the literature on inter-organisational control by providing more insights into the interaction between information and trust as control levers.

Originality/value – The focus on value chain phases enables us to analyse how different control patterns or archetypes can be co-present in a given relationship.