Geography Working papers
Global Production Networks and the analysis of economic development
Jeffrey Henderson, Peter Dicken, Martin Hess, Neil M Coe and Henry Wai-chung Yeung
Abstract
The analysis of economic development has been bedevilled by a series of analytical
disjunctions that have resulted in work either at macro or meso levels of abstraction or,
where empirical investigations have probed micro level processes, the larger analytical
picture has often been absent, merely implicit, or at best weakly developed. In this
paper, a concept of the ‘Global Production Network’ (GPN) is developed, which
attempts to overcome the analytical difficulties of other approaches to explain global
economic activities and their impact on development at various scales. After a critical
examination of antecedents and contemporaries, we outline a conceptual framework for
mapping and analysing economic globalisation and its developmental consequences. In
so doing we have foregrounded the ways in which companies organise and control their
global operations, the ways in which they are (or can be) influenced by states, trade
unions, NGOs and other institutions in particular locations and the implications that the
resulting combinations of agents and processes might have for industrial upgrading and
ultimately for the prospects of poverty reduction and/or generalised prosperity in those
locations. The main categories and dimensions of GPN analysis then are briefly
discussed, using a stylised example.
View/Download Options
You will need a PDF reader such as Adobe Acrobat (downloadable from Adobe) to view PDF file(s). PDF files open in a new window.