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Global value changes continued to expand until the late 2000s. On the other hand, regional value chains have formed around major regional hubs due to the expansion of domestic demand in emerging economies, such as China, and strengthened trade protectionism since the global financial crisis. Such changes lead to the reorganisation of value chains, focusing on domestic markets (reshoring) or neighbouring countries (nearshoring). In particular, the importance of supply chain risk management has been highlighted following disruptions to the supply network due to the COVID-19 outbreak in December 2019. In this regard, major countries such as the USA and the EU are rapidly shifting to regional value chains for stable and sustainable production, rather than primarily aiming for production efficiency targeted at reducing costs. Industries in particular are more exposed to such supply chain risks under the existing structure and it now has become extremely important for businesses to take reaction to such risks. This is especially important for major industries in a country such as automobile or semiconductor manufacturing industries in South Korea. The aim of this study, therefore, is to establish the basis for the simultaneous growth of ports and linked industries by examining the existing structure of the global value chain for the automotive industry, which has a strong presence in South Korea’s domestic economy. In this regard, this research carries out a supply chain analysis focusing on the imports and exports of automotive parts. It also analyses the current structural risks and suggests risk management measures to secure a stable supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the global value chain (GVC) approach to understand the relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the changing patterns of global trade, investment and production, and its impact on economic and social upgrading. It aims to illuminate how GVCs can advance our understanding about MNEs and rising power (RP) firms and their impact on economic and social upgrading in fragmented and dispersed global production systems.

The paper reviews the GVC literature focusing on two conceptual elements of the GVC approach, governance and upgrading, and highlights three key recent developments in GVCs: concentration, regionalization and synergistic governance.

The paper underscores the complicated role of GVCs in shaping economic and social upgrading for emerging economies, RP firms and developing country firms in general. Rising geographic and organizational concentration in GVCs leads to the uneven distribution of upgrading opportunities in favor of RP firms, and yet economic upgrading may be elusive even for the most established suppliers because of power asymmetry with global buyers. Shifting end markets and the regionalization of value chains can benefit RP firms by presenting alternative markets for upgrading. Yet, without further upgrading, such benefits may be achieved at the expense of social downgrading. Finally, the ineffectiveness of private standards to achieve social upgrading has led to calls for synergistic governance through the cooperation of private, public and social actors, both global and local.

The paper illuminates how the GVC approach and its key concepts can contribute to the critical international business and RP firms literature by examining the latest dynamics in GVCs and their impacts on economic and social development in developing countries.

Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) have increasingly become integrated into global value chains, where they face social and environmental requirements from multinational buyers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of SMEs with respect to sustainable supply chain management in global value chains.

Drawing from a survey of sustainable supply chain management practices among 300 Danish SMEs, the paper discusses the concept of governance in global value chains. The paper addresses two questions: first, to what extent are SMEs affected by social and environmental requirements from buyers? Second, to what extent do SMEs apply such requirements to their own suppliers?

The paper concludes that SMEs face requirements from their buyers much more frequently than they apply such requirements to their own suppliers. Also many buyer requirements in the value chain seem to be latent in that they are neither contractual nor subject to verification. The paper argues that this points to a gap between rule making and rule keeping in sustainable supply chain management.

Research should focus on the impact of sustainability standards on the competitiveness of small firms in other developed countries, as well as in emerging markets such as China and India.

Multinational buyers and SME‐support providers should focus on improving the capacity of SMEs to reconcile sustainability standards with competitiveness.

The paper provides new data on the role of SMEs in sustainable supply chain management.

Purpose – After tracing the development of the global value chains (GVC) approach, the chapter argues that by refocusing on the international strategies of lead firms it is possible to bring location specificity issues into play and contribute to retrieve a distinctive international content to the GVC governance theory.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter discusses the GVC governance theory, drawing from recent contributions in the field of international business (IB).

Findings – Although designed to account for the rise of new inter-firm networks controlled by international lead firms, the new GVC theory of governance somehow lacks a distinct international content and, privileging transactional constraints, falls short of explicitly considering variations in lead firm structural characteristics and strategies. An alternative governance schema is then proposed, taking explicitly into account the strategic evaluations that lead firms carry out with regard to their internal resources compared to suppliers’.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable) – The chapter provides the outlines of a new promising international research agenda for GVC researchers. Additional research is needed to further investigate the relation between location specificity, the strategic motives to go global and the international organisation of the value chain.

Practical implications (if applicable) – The alternative governance schema proposed in the chapter aspires to represent a simple tool aimed at supporting managers in the establishment of the appropriate boundaries of the firm.

Originality/value – The chapter shows that both IB research and GVC analysis could greatly benefit from reasoned cross-fertilisation.

In recent years, both academics and institutions have acknowledged the crucial role multinational enterprises (MNEs) can play in addressing the sustainability challenges, as formalized by the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, because of their extensiveness and their design as country-level targets, SDGs have proven challenging to operationalize at a firm level. This problem opens new and relevant avenues for research in international business (IB). This chapter attempts to frame the topic of extended value chain sustainability in the IB literature. In particular, it addresses a specific topic, that is, how sustainability and resilience-building practices interact in global value chains (GVCs). To do so, the present study develops the case of STMicroelectronics (ST), one of the biggest semiconductor companies worldwide.

To identify points of similarity and differences of emphasis between internalisation theory and global value chain (GVC) theory and to highlight how the latter’s particular approach is useful in analysing the impact of private sustainability standards.

Review of some key texts and reviews of internalisation theory combined with author’s reflections on GVC theory based on his contributions to its development.

GVC theory shares much common ground with the internalisation theory of international business, but their different starting points lead to different strengths and weaknesses. Internalisation theory is strong on the logic of decisions by transnational companies to internalise or externalise their activities. GVC theory is strongest in its consideration of how and why companies manage externalised activities in different ways, and its theory of network governance focuses on how governance challenges change in response to market requirements, shifts in the break point between enterprises, the role of codification in simplifying governance and the control of activities across multiple links in value chains. These factors explain how private and public–private standards in the field of sustainability are both a response to new external demands on value chains and, simultaneously, a means of reducing the complexity of governance challenges that such demands create.

Few attempts have been made to compare the two theories, and value chain theorists have not engaged with the international business literature. The chapter highlights the scope for a continuing and more systematic comparison of the two literatures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the shrimp aquaculture export industry in Vietnam can achieve further development in the highly competitive global market particularly in the context of complying with food safety standards set by the markets.

This paper applies two conceptual approaches, local institutions and global value chains. The concept of global value chains helps this paper to understand what extent the external pressures are placed on the industry while the concept of local institutions effectively examines its responses to the external pressures. Applying this conceptual framework this paper examines an empirical case analysing secondary data and literature.

Market requirements on food safety are brought by global buyers through the global value chains governance structure to the local institutional function. It includes local buyer-supplier relationship within the industrial cluster, industrial policy and business institutions, although it is less likely to address the local backwards suppliers to improve the industrial capability of food safety standard compliance.

This paper has a research limitation due to the prioritised research scope that critically examines potential pathway for further development of Vietnamese shrimp aquaculture export industry. Therefore, it needs further comparative in-depth analysis with more vertically organised industrial structure performed by the countries such as Thailand.

The originality of this paper is to critically examine the conceptual limitation of global value chains approach in the context of food safety standard compliance issue, which is likely to be originated in local backward suppliers by applying a complementary concept, local institutions.

Through its impact on both demand and supply, the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has profoundly disrupted supply chains throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying drivers of the supply chain vulnerability exposed by COVID-19 and considers potential future directions for global supply.

This paper adopts a case study approach, reviewing the automotive manufacturing sector in Australia to illustrate how neoliberal globalisation policy settings have shifted large tracts of manufacturing from the global north to the global south.

The authors demonstrate the way that neoliberal globalisation policies, facilitated by certain accounting rhetorics and technologies, have consolidated manufacturing in China and Southeast Asia in ways that embed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. The authors present three scenarios for post-COVID-19 supply chains and the accounting techniques likely to garner stronger attention as a result of the pandemic.

The paper illustrates how certain accounting rhetorics and technologies facilitate neoliberal globalisation, embedding supply chain vulnerability that has been exposed by COVID-19. It also suggests how supply chain accounting may develop more robust supply chains in a post-COVID-19 world and sets out an agenda for future research in this area.

A number of practical supply chain accounting and planning technologies are suggested to facilitate more robust supply chains.

This paper draws attention to the neoliberal globalisation policies that have shaped global supply chains as well as how COVID-19, in concert with other geopolitical trajectories, may represent a watershed moment for global supply chains.

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 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.