Beyond 'Global Production Networks': Australian Fashion Week's Trans-Sectoral Synergies

When studies of industrial organisation are informed by commodity chain, actor network, or global production network theories and focus on tracing commodity flows, social networks, or a combination of the two, they can easily overlook the less routine trans-sectoral associations that are crucial to the creation and realisation of value. This paper shifts attention to identifying the sites at which diverse specialisations meet to concentrate and amplify mutually reinforcing circuits of value. These valorisation processes are demonstrated in the case of Australian Fashion Week, an event in which multiple interests converge to synchronize different expressions of fashion ideas, actively construct fashion markets and enhance the value of a diverse range of fashionable commodities. Conceptualising these interconnected industries as components of a trans-sectoral fashion complex has implications for understanding regional development, world cities, production location, and the manner in which production systems “touch down” in different places

Back to normal? The future of global production networks.

It is neither likely nor desirable for central banks to exit from unconventional monetary policies in the near future. However, it is important that central banks develop an exit strategy, evaluate the merits of new and old monetary policy tools and communicate with the public so as to maintain financial stability, support economic growth and minimize future inflationary risks. Central bank communication policy will turn out to be crucial and more challenging than it was before the crisis.Wertschöpfung; Outsourcing; Business Network; Offshoring; Globalisierung; Wirtschaftskrise;

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.

Standardised semantic models to support the configuration of global production networks

The configuration and deployment of global production networks, raises questions about the interchange of data and information between varied and different organisations, domains and systems. Standards should be an instrumental part of forming a basis to enable seamless interoperability, yet there is no clear support for global production networks. This paper sets out a reference ontology for global production networks being developed as a basis for interoperability between systems, with the potential for it to be developed as a standard