Suchergebnisse

Front Cover -- Praise -- Half Title -- About The Author -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Abbreviations -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Business, Sustainability and the Global Economy -- A World of Global Value Chains -- Governing Sustainability -- Green Is the New Black: The Business of Sustainability -- Sustainability Management, Green Capital Accumulation and the Sustainability-Driven Supplier Squeeze -- Main Arguments and Novel Contributions -- Organization of the Book -- 1: What We Know About Sustainability Governance -- Transnational Sustainability Governance -- Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives on Sustainability -- Self-Regulation, Strategy and Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility -- Discussion and Next Steps -- 2: Power in Global Value Chains -- Approaches to GVC Governance -- Four Types of Power in Global Value Chains -- Discussion and Next Steps -- 3: Sustainability, Power and Governance in the Wine, Coffee and Biofuels Global Value Chains -- Global Value Chain Structures and Sustainability Initiatives -- Changing Constellations of Power -- Discussion and Next Steps -- 4: Value Creation and Capture through Economic and Environmental Upgrading -- Upgrading in Global Value Chains -- The Environmental Aspects of Upgrading -- Economic and Environmental Upgrading in the Wine, Coffee and Biofuels GVCs -- Discussion and Next Steps -- 5: Orchestrating Sustainability -- Transnational Governance of Sustainability -- The Enabling Factors of Public Orchestration -- Public Orchestration in the Aviation GVC -- Public Orchestration in the Maritime Shipping GVC -- Aviation and Shipping Compared -- Power, Governance and Orchestration in the Wine, Coffee and Biofuels GVCs -- Discussion and Next Steps -- Conclusion: Green Capital, Brown Environments.

In this paper I propose to push the frontier of global value chain (GVC) governance analysis through the concept of 'polarity'. Much of the existing GVC literature has focused on 'unipolar' value chains, where one group of 'lead firms' inhabiting a specific function in a chain plays a dominant role in governing it. Some scholars have explored the dynamics of governance in GVCs characterized as 'bipolar', where two sets of actors in different functional positions both drive the chain. I expand this direction further to suggest conceptualizing governance within a continuum between unipolarity and multipolarity Empirically, I do so by examining the evolutionary dynamics of governance in biofuel value chains, with specific focus on the key regulatory and institutional features that facilitated their emergence and expansion. First, I examine the formation, evolution, and governance of three national/regional value chains (in Brazil, the US, and the EU); then, I provide evidence to support a trend towards the increasing but still partial formation of a global biofuel value chain and examine its governance traits.

Fish exports are the second largest foreign exchange earner in Uganda. When Uganda's fish export industry started to operate in the late 1980s and early 1990s, one may have thought that fish was being turned into gold. From an export value of just over one million US$ in 1990, the mighty Nile Perch had earned the country over 45 million US$ just six years later. But alchemy proved to be more than the quest of the philosophers' stone to change base metals into gold. From 1997 to 2000, the industry experienced a series of import bans, imposed by the EU on grounds of food safety. Despite claims to the contrary, the EU did not provide scientific proof that fish was actually 'unsafe'. Rather, the poor performance of Uganda's regulatory and monitoring system was used as a justification. The 'system', as the characters of an allegory, has no individual personality and is the embodiment of the moral qualities that 'the consumer' expects from 'responsible operators' in the fish sector. Only by fixing this system of regulations and inspections, and by performing the ritual of laboratory testing did the Ugandan industry regain ist status as a 'safe' source of fish. Fish exports now earn almost 90 million US$ to the country. This apparent success story was achieved by a common front comprising government authorities and the processing industry, a high level of private-public collaboration not often seen in East Africa. Yet, important chunks of the regulatory and monitoring system exist only on paper. Furthermore, the system is supposed to achieve a series of contradictory objectives: to facilitate efficient logistics and ensure food safety; to match market demand and take care of sustainability; to implement a top-down food safety monitoring system and a bottom-up fisheries co-management system. This means that at least some food safety-related operations have to be carried out as 'rituals of verification'. Given the importance of microbiological tests and laboratories in the food safety compliance system, alchemic rituals are perhaps a more appropriate metaphor. While the white coats and advanced machinery of present-day alchemists reassure insecure European regulators and consumers, it leaves the Ugandan fish industry in a vulnerable position. In Uganda, fish can now be turned into gold again – but for how long?