Abstract
Firms that upgrade and then maintain supply-demand matching collaboration with a highly-governed commercial chain, like a Global Value Chain (GVC), are thought to obtain better opportunities for improving their business prospects. This paper reviews a study on such a hypothetical impact by using data from the fish value chain of Seychelles, comprising a few small-scale producers that have upgraded to supply foreign markets. The difference in the mean value of 5 months’ of production capacity, actual output and productivity (as total output value/input value) of random fish suppliers that had upgraded (n = 34) and not upgraded (n = 32) were tested. Four of the upgraded suppliers were subsequently interviewed on key production-related attributes. Only the difference in the mean productivity figures of the two groups of firms was not significant. The interviews suggest that (1) the productivity of upgraded suppliers is strongly impacted by their directly-controlled resources and exploited fish stocks and (2) viability challenges motivate upgraded suppliers to multi-chain and target various foreign and native customers. The results indicate that supply-demand collaboration in a highly-governed fish chain allows small-scale producers to improve their production capacity, associated output and their potential productivity too if it helps strengthen the environmental sustainability of their fish stocks.
Highlights
Two hypotheses often found in the Global Value Chain (GVC) literature (Van Dijk, 2012; Humphrey and Schmitz, 2001; Gereffi, 2001), for instance: (1) firms that upgrade to participate in a GVC improve their business prospects and (2) governance positively impacts on the business prospects and processes of an upgraded firm
The industry has a well-developed, foreign-dominated, export-oriented industrial tuna value chain and a developing fresh and frozen fish (FFF) value chain, which is reserved for domestic harvesters targeting common-pool fish stocks on an open-access basis
The bases of all FFF value chain suppliers tend to be close to their principal buyers
Summary
Two hypotheses often found in the GVC literature (Van Dijk, 2012; Humphrey and Schmitz, 2001; Gereffi, 2001), for instance: (1) firms that upgrade to participate in a GVC improve their business prospects and (2) governance positively impacts on the business prospects and processes of an upgraded firm. Empirical tests of such hypothetical impacts have not been traced in the small-scale fishing industry but in various others, including the apparel & car manufacturing (Gereffi, 2001, for example) and agri-food (Lee et al, 2010, for example). Drawing on the works of Van Dijk (2012), Humphrey and Schmitz (2001) and Gereffi (2001) and other developmental scholars, the dynamics of the FFF chain suggested that it is a potentially rich source of data for empirically testing the impact of ‘upgrading’ on lower-tier jsd.ccsenet.org
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