Upgrading strategies in global furniture value chains

Abstract not available

The global wood furniture value chain: what prospects for upgrading by developing countries? The case of South Africa

Because of its resource and labour intensity, the wood furniture sector presents an opportunity for developing countries and their firms to participate effectively in the global economy. This paper begins with a brief description of the global wood furniture industry and highlights the importance of exports wood furniture products for developing countries and emerging and transitional economies. The paper then maps the wood furniture value chain and opens-up the nature of the buying function, since this function represents the key form of control over global production networks in this sector (that is, the wood furniture chain is what is increasingly referred to as a "buyer-driven chain"). The paper then asks what producers need to do in order to upgrade their activities, particularly in developing countries. In order to address these issues the authors describe the evolution of an initiative designed to promote the upgrading of one segment of the wood furniture industry in a middle-income country, South Africa. This experience is then used to generate a series of generic policy challenges, which might be transferred to other countries and to other sectors

From clusters to cluster-based economic development

Over the last decades, changes in the global economy and the emergence of Global Value Chains (GVCs) have raised the interest in understanding the specific conditions and cross-company interactions within and across locations. For companies, the need to choose the right location for specific activities moved from an operational to a strategic issue. For countries, regions and cities, competition raised the stakes of understanding how to improve productivity and attract firms in specific fields beyond providing low factor costs and subsidies. Many countries, from natural-resource-rich, to transition economies, and to developed countries have launched competitiveness policies and cluster initiatives involving various stakeholders. The paper addresses how clusters can be leveraged for economic policy and what the role of different stakeholders in this process is. This paper summarises the cluster concept, focusing on the main theoretical framework and on recent empirical findings, and discusses key pillars of a cluster-based economic policy approach. The paper concludes with an application of the concept to resource-rich, oil-dependent economies.cluster concept; competitiveness; economic performance; global value chains; GVCs; organised collaboration; cluster-based economic development; economic policy; economic diversification; resource-rich countries; clusters.

Globalisation of the automotive industry: main features and trends

This paper lays out the main features of the global automotive industry and identifies several important trends. A boom in developing country sales and production has not yet overshadowed the importance of existing markets in developed regions. Regional integration is very strong at an operational level, yet the industry has recently developed a set of global-scale value chain linkages, and retains national and local elements as well. The paper highlights how global, regional, national and local value chains are nested to create a pattern of global integration that is distinctive to the industry. We use global value chain analysis to help explain the limits of build-to-order in the industry, the role of regional and global suppliers, the shifting geography of production and how the characteristics of value chain linkages in the industry favour tight integration and regional production. We describe how industry concentration focuses power in the hands of a few large lead firms and discuss the implications of this for value chain governance and the geography of production.status: publishe

Fuelling the global value chains: what role for logistics capabilities?

Intensifying competition and changing customer demands for better and cheaper goods and services, and faster delivery have made the organisational systems of Global Value Chains (GVCs) more complex and difficult to manage and coordinate. Leading enterprises in GVCs were forced to focus on their core competences while outsourcing other activities to enterprises that specialise in physical distribution and materials management, in transport and in logistics. Complex system of GVC and networks are dependent on efficient logistics. The benefits arising from GVCs' spreading could not be realised without co-developments in modern logistics services, underpinned by innovations in containerisation, intermodal transport and the application of Information Technology (IT) in physical distribution and materials management. As a result new innovative logistics providers and concepts have emerged, but the development and provision of advanced logistics services vary from country to country. Countries seeking to benefit from globalisation and from GVCs need to address key underlying factors of their logistics capabilities and how they impact on their industrial performances, productivity and competitiveness. This paper focuses on logistics capabilities and on how they can be monitored. The paper presents major changes in logistics industry since 1990s and discusses recent work to monitor logistics performances of countries with a composite index. The paper proposes constructing a new index to monitor logistics capabilities and concludes with policy recommendations for developing countries.logistics industry; GVCs; networks; logistics performance index; LPI; logistics capability index; LOCAI; capability drivers; logistics capabilities; industrial policy; global value chains; core competences; outsourcing; advanced logistics services; developing countries; performance monitoring.