The upgrading framework in the apparel industry literature: insights from apparel firms in Ningbo, China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent literature has problematized the limits of deeply held assumptions about linear, unidirectional upgrading trajectories in global value chains (GVCs). As firm and chain trajectories and sources of upgrading have changed in recent years, GVC analysis has adjusted to focus on new emerging actors and new distributions of power within value chains. After a discussion of some limits to the treatment of upgrading in the GVC literature, the paper develops a simple extension of the classical model of upgrading in ways that do not presuppose particular valuations of functional, product, and processes upgrading, and that do not fetishize upgrading as such. The paper works with case studies of four Chinese firms located in Ningbo, China. Each ‘wears multiple hats’ and together they provide illustrative examples of the limits of linear, unidirectional approaches of upgrading. This simple model has the singular advantage of ensuring that trajectories of business upgrading and downgrading in GVCs can be understood as always open, often operating in diverse and contradictory ways. In this sense, the confusion of upgrading with firm strategy with their regional impacts can be avoided.