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Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains

This paper relates participation in global value chains (GVCs) to development patterns and ecologically unequal exchange (EUE). We conduct a principal components analysis and a clustering analysis along six dimensions (GVC participation, GVC value capture, investment, socioeconomic development, domestic environmental impact and international environmental balance) for 133 countries between 1995 and 2015. We find three social, ecological, productive development and GVC insertion patterns: “curse of GVC marginalization”, “ecologically perverse upgrading” and “reproduction of the core”. While our results confirm the asymmetry in ecological degradation between high-income and low-income economies shown by EUE, it refines and nuances these findings. We argue that environmentalasymmetries are driven in large part by differences in how countries articulate within GVCs. Countries with a higher capacity to capture value from GVC participation (“reproduction of the core”) are able to displace environmental impacts to countries facing a trade-off between upgrading in GVCs and ecological degradation (“ecologically perverse upgrading”). Marginalization from GVCs, mitigates the impact of ecologically unequal exchange but constitutes a barrier to socio-economic benefits. Moreover, the lack of diffusion of more ecologically-efficient processes through GVCs has a negative impact on domestic ecological degradation for countries of the “curse of GVC marginalization” group.

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Performance, risk, and overflows: When are multiple management control practices related?

Current research relates multiple control practices as packages, systems, or accumulations. This relationship signifies that management control practices exist as multiplicities and interact in various ways. These interactions strengthen management control practices. However, this generalisation misses the when of relations, which is a problem, as management control practices are not always related, for example, because they often have their own domain attached to an organisational entity’s tasks. This paper reports on a study of a firm’s (Automaker) management control of its supply chain. This was organised as two types of concern – risk and performance management – that were delegated to two organisational entities each having its associated management control practices. This organisation was a delegation of responsibilities, decision rights and control practices. The study draws on Michel Callon’s distinction between framing and overflow to analyse the framing activity involved in upholding this separation and the overflows stemming from the difficulties of upholding strong framings. In effect, the paper discusses when risk and performance management practices are related, un-related and re-related and concludes that the when helps explain how the relation works to rearrange the importance of the framings and via overflows to introduce completely new framing devices.

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