Peter Gibbon

Quality standards, conventions and the governance of global value chains

Convention theory helps refine our understanding of the governance of global value chains through its analysis of ‘quality’. In this article, it is argued that global value chains are becoming increasingly ‘buyer-driven’, even though they are characterized by ‘hands-off’ forms of co-ordination between ‘lead firms’ and their immediate suppliers. This is because lead firms have been able to embed complex quality information into widely accepted standards and codification and certification procedures. As suggested by convention theory, their success in doing so has depended on defining and managing value chain-specific quality attributes that are attuned to broader narratives about quality that circulate within society more generally.

Governing global value chains: an introduction

Abstract This introductory paper to the special issue on governing global value chains (GVCs) focuses on the concept of governance as the dimension of GVCs that has received the most theoretical and empirical attention to date. After a brief introduction of the GVC concept in relation to the literature on economic globalization, we review the three main interpretations of GVC governance that have been advanced: governance as driving, governance as coordination and governance as normalization. After summaries of the four subsequent papers (by Bair, Gibbon and Ponte, Milberg, and Palpacuer), the authors offer reflections on the current state of development of GVC analysis. The unevenness and theoretical eclecticism of the GVC literature to date, particularly but not only with regard to the understanding of governance, poses the question of whether it is possible to reconcile the different approaches within a unified paradigm. If not, then GVC analysis is better understood as a methodological approach that can be mobilized within various theoretical perspectives.

Upgrading Primary Production: A Global Commodity Chain Approach

Abstract Global commodity chain (GCC) analysis has been concerned mainly with examining power relations in global manufacturing industries, although it has been preoccupied increasingly by the question of how developing country (DC) producers can upgrade. This paper extends GCC analysis to “traditional” primary commodities, where international traders exercise the “driving” role, and suggests a new agenda for their upgrading in DCs, based upon public action.

Global value chains: from governance to governmentality?

Abstract One of the main preoccupations of global value chain (GVC) analysis has been how value chains are governed and by which types of firms. Most current conceptualizations distinguish between different types of GVC governance and see them as effects of given distributions of attributes between firms along chains. The governmentality literature instead sees economic governance primarily in terms of invoked models of practice, and interprets it through economic agents’ descriptions of their own governing (or governed) practices. Drawing on the specialized magazines, training manuals and professional journals that served purchasing practitioners in US manufacturing, this article draws attention to the hitherto unexplored role of expert knowledge and practices in GVC governance. At the same time, it highlights that the governmentality literature glosses over problems associated with the actual implementation and effectiveness of expert practices. The article concludes by reflecting on the theoretical implications of such an analysis for both the GVC and the governmentality literatures.

Global Commodity Chains and African Export Agriculture

The last twenty years or so have seen a new conjuncture in international trade in tropical agricultural products. That conjuncture combines both changes in the organization of the (Northern) manufacturer and consumer segments of the global commodity chains for those products, and in marketing arrangements in their (Southern) countries of origin, associated with structural adjustment and liberalization. This introductory essay provides the context for the case studies that follow, first by introducing some of the key concepts and analytical issues in the global commodity chain (GCC) approach and other recent relevant literature such as the French ‘convention’ theory. It then sketches an historical framework for examining international trade in tropical agricultural products, with brief illustrations of the specific trajectories of Africa and some African countries within that framework. Finally, it shows how a number of issues are explored in the case studies presented, including how current changes might affect the future prospects of smallholder (‘peasant’) production of tropical export crops.

‘Globalisation’ and African export crop agriculture

It is commonly agreed that Africa has become increasingly marginalised within the current global economy. However, there are few existing attempts to identify the precise contours of this marginalisation or to explicate the dynamics giving it a precise shape. Against the background of a discussion of theoretical entry points to this problem, as well as of some of its broad quantitative dimensions, this article attempts to develop working hypotheses focused on the marginalisation/restructuring of African export crop agriculture.

Authoritarianism, democracy and adjustment : the politics of economic reform in Africa

An invaluable introduction to the issues raised about the winners and losers of structural adjustment policies. The book raises new questions and serves as a research agenda for further exploration ...

At the Cutting Edge? Financialisation and UK Clothing Retailers' Global Sourcing Patterns and Practices

This paper examines the relation between financialisation and firm-level management decision-making in a specific sector and in relation to a specific area of decision-making (sourcing), drawing on evidence from interviews, unpublished UK trade data and company annual reports. It argues that, while requirements for higher returns on capital employed have been internalised at firm-level, these are compatible with a variety of general strategic responses and more practical decisions. Firms have selected between these largely on the basis of considerations that are best described as ‘retailerist’, as opposed to strictly ‘financialist’. Thus while financialisation matters, it only does so in ways that are highly mediated.

The World Bank and African Poverty, 1973–91

Since 1987–8 the World Bank, together with other donors, has been engaged in a programme of activities known as ‘Social Dimensions of Adjustment’ (S.D.A.). This is the latest in a line of ‘pro-poor’ initiatives which the organisation has sponsored over the last two decades. This article analyses the Banks succession of policies against the background of the changing political and economic world situation, as well as alternative policy agendas.

A failed agenda? African agriculture under structural adjustment with special reference to Kenya and Ghana

On the basis of a close examination of World Bank agricultural reform policies in Kenya and Ghana in the 1980s, the author argues that the structural adjustment agenda has been either aborted or, where implemented, has not had the results intended. In both cases this is because the adjustment problematic assumes the presence of structures and conditions at variance to African realities. As a result, the main beneficiaries of adjustment tend to be the forces it ostensibly sets out to subvert.