Leonhard Plank

Regionalism, end markets and ownership matter: Shifting dynamics in the apparel export industry in Sub Saharan Africa

This paper shows the importance of ownership, end markets and regionalism within the global value chain and related conceptual frameworks. This is done through unpacking the development trajectories of the major Sub Saharan African apparel export industries against the backdrop of trade regime changes. Ownership characteristics of supplier firms shape the ability to shift between different end markets and respond to lead firm requirements; and the level of their local and regional embeddedness impacts on different forms of upgrading. The emergence of new regionalism centred around investment and end markets provides pathways for new trajectories of more sustainable value chains and local industrialization. More locally and regionally embedded firms have been able to shift with uneven success to new, and in particular regional, markets. In contrast, Asian-owned transnational producers remain focused on the US market with limited market opportunities and upgrading potential. Different types of ownership and embeddedness dynamics are therefore important to explain the co-evolution of highly differentiated value chain dynamics creating a variety of apparel industrialization trajectories in the apparel export industry in Sub Saharan African.

What Does ‘Fast Fashion’ Mean for Workers? Apparel Production in Morocco and Romania

The expansion of organizationally fragmented and geographically dispersed global production networks (GPNs) has been an important source of employment generation in many developing and transition countries over the past decades. However, the quality of employment generated in these GPNs is often characterized by a high degree of flexibility, uncertainty and precariousness. These employment quality characteristics may be specifically relevant in the increasingly important fast fashion segment of the apparel industry. At the heart of the fast fashion strategy lies a business model based on increased variety, flexibility and permanently shrinking product life cycles that require bringing new products to markets at an increasing pace and in shorter time spans. This implies not only increased organizational flexibility and shrinking lead times for supplier firms but also delivering high quality apparel items at low cost. In this context, supplier firms may struggle to accommodate potentially conflicting requirements and may pass on these pressures in the form of expanded and flexible work hours, intensified production processes and delayed wage payments to their workforce. These pressures may be particularly intense for regional suppliers located in countries in geographic proximity to the key end markets of the EU-15, the United States and Japan that derive their competitive advantage from being integrated into the fast fashion segment of apparel GPNs.

Introduction: global commodity chains and production networks understanding uneven development in the global economy

Development – whichever definition one might choose – is a moving target. is paper aims to investigate the contributions various chain and network approaches – namely the global commodity chain (GCC), global value chain (GVC) and global production networks (GPN) frameworks – can offer to investigate geographically uneven development. To this end, the paper draws on epistemological discussions in development studies and cognate social sciences and looks at development both as a historical process of the expansion of (capitalist) systems of production, circulation and consumption, and as processes of social intervention and the struggle for securing livelihoods. It concludes by supporting a hybrid development research agenda to which network approaches can substantially contribute. Entwicklung, welche Definition man auch zugrunde legt, ist ein Konzept mit sich verändernden Bedeutungen. Vor diesem Hintergrund diskutiert der Autor, welchen Beitrag Netzwerkansätze in der Entwicklungsforschung leisten können, um räumlich ungleiche Entwicklung zu analysieren. Dabei wird zwischen dem Ansatz der globalen Warenkette, der globalen Wertschöpfungskette und der globalen Produktionsnetzwerke unterschieden. Bezug nehmend auf erkenntnistheoretische Diskussionen in der Entwicklungsforschung und in verwandten sozialwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen wird Entwicklung zugleich aus zwei Perspektiven betrachtet: als historischer Prozess der Ausbreitung kapitalistischer Wirtschaftssysteme und als Prozess sozialer Intervention zur Sicherung des Lebensunterhalts. Der Artikel schließt mit einem Plädoyer für eine „hybride“ Agenda in der

Social up- and downgrading of apparel workers in Romania: fast fashion, post-socialist transformation, Europeanization, and the global economic crisis

Although the expansion of global production networks (GPNs) has been an important source of employment generation in many developing and transition countries, the qualitative aspects of this employment are less promising, often being characterized by high flexibility, uncertainty and precariousness. Drivers of these outcomes are industry dynamics and lead firm strategies such as fast fashion in the apparel industry. Equally important are, however, multi-scalar institutional contexts and state policies that influence social up- and downgrading trajectories. Against this background, the article assesses the up-/downgrading of apparel workers in Romania, a key regional supplier of western European markets. In addition to the sourcing practices of lead firms, and particularly fast fashion, we highlight the legacy of the country’s state socialist past and its post-socialist transformation, Europeanization and the global economic crisis as drivers of GPN outcomes.