Political Contestation in Global Production Networks

This paper develops a critical framework on international management and production that draws from the literatures on global commodity chains and global production networks (GPNs), from institutional entrepreneurship, as well as from neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy. The framework views GPNs as integrated economic, political, and discursive systems, in which market and political power are intertwined. The framework highlights the contingent stability of GPNs as well as the potential for actors to engage politically in contestation and collaboration over system governance and the distribution of benefits. The framework offers a multidimensional and multi-level approach to understanding power relations, ideology, and value appropriation in GPNs. The framework is valuable for examining the intersection of GPNs with charged political and social issues such as sweatshops and incomes for coffee growers, and the role of geography as a source of stability and tension in these networks. When you drink a cup of coffee, you are completing the final link in a global chain of activities that made that cup of coffee possible…. That simple act of sipping your coffee connects you to peasant farmers in Colombia and Indonesia, to dockworkers in São Paulo and Mombassa, New Orleans and San Francisco, and to many others in between (Talbot, 2004: 1). Multinational corporations (MNCs) face increasing pressure to engage with social issues related to their international operations. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, has been forced to accept the manufacture of generic drugs for AIDS/HIV in developing countries (Sell & Manufacturers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) face a host of activist campaigns and are subject to an international agreement that regulates trade in these products (Andrée, 2005). Branded clothing companies have confronted numerous allegations of running 'sweatshops' in developing countries (Boje, 1998; Tulder & Kolk, 2001). These cases exemplify the entanglement of global production networks (GPNs) with charged social and political issues. GPNs are thus characterized by contestation as well as collaboration among multiple actors, including firms, state and international agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and industry associations, each with their own interests and agendas. GPNs are therefore not simply arenas for market competition or chains of value-adding activities, but rather comprise complex political-economic systems in which markets, and their associated distribution of resources and authority, are constructed within, as well as actively shape, their socio-political context. A useful starting point for analyzing GPNs can be drawn from Gereffi's (1994: 2) description of 'Global Commodity Chains' …