Analysis of the Upgrade of Chinars Manufacturing Industry Structure from Outsourcing in Global Value Chain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the geographic mobility of organisations by focusing on an instance of a rural community hosting a mobile phone plant in Romania. The paper depicts the process of changes in the community and outlines the effects during the lifecycle of the investment: starting from the plant’s re-location from Germany to Romania until its closure and re-location to Southern China. Design/methodology/approach – This study emerged from a 16 month ethnography in the community conducted between 2011 and 2013. The quotes and observations come from recorded interviews and field notes taken during this time. Findings – The outcome of this work is to show how firms generate relationships not only with each other, but also with local communities, their labour markets and economies. As the author argue in this work, those relationships, despite their intensity and transformative power, are unstable and contrary to expectations might prove to be fragile and temporary. Originality/value – A number of approaches, such as world-system theory, political economy or the global value chain theory, try to describe the ongoing re-location of manufacturing industry by employing a top-down perspective. In this work, the author goes beyond this view and instead focus on the cultural meanings of this process. The author’s bottom-up perspective focuses on the particular geographic location of a production node, an important part of the global value chain of a major producer of consumer electronics. The unique value of this work is also that it shows the local outcomes of the investment and the way that workers understand their participation in global production at different stages of organisational life.

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Vertical Specialization of Production: Critical Review and Empirical Evidence for the Mexican Manufacturing Industries 1994-2014

International Journal of Business and Social Research ◽

10.18533/ijbsr.v6i2.926 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 11 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Maritza Sotomayor

Keyword(s):

Value Chain ◽

Manufacturing Industry ◽

Bilateral Trade ◽

The United States ◽

Global Value Chain ◽

Vertical Specialization ◽

Empirical Estimation ◽

Quality Ladder ◽

Empirical Approaches

<p>This paper surveys Vertical Specialization (VS) from different empirical approaches, including the various conceptualizations of VS, the problems with its quantification, and a case study. The empirical estimation of this paper refers to the Mexican manufacturing industry and the in-bond industry (also known as maquiladora). The purpose of this paper is to compare VS, through the application of the Vertical Intra-Industry Trade (VIIT) indexes, for maquiladora and non-maquiladora industries and to contrast the degree to which the maquiladora industry is integrated with the global value chain relative to the non-maquiladora activities for the 1994-2006 period. Furthermore, this paper quantifies VIIT for the post-maquiladora period (2007-2014) in order to discuss if there have been changes in the VIIT since the conclusion of the maquiladora program in 2006. In particular, this paper tests if the quality ladder hypothesis applies to Mexico for its bilateral trade with the United States and Canada. The empirical estimations show the remarkable differences between maquiladora and non-maquiladora VS and the impacts that changes in the NAFTA tariff schedule for the automotive industry have had on the bilateral trade pattern.</p>

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