Contest for Value in Global Value Chains

Who captures the value created in global supply chains? How should gaps in value capture among participants be amended and by whom? Focusing on the global apparel supply chain and employing value creation as a yardstick for evaluation of value capture, this book documents disturbing misalignments between value creation and value capture among global brands, manufacturers, labor, and consumers. The authors posit that the failure of both markets and governments to adequately distribute the value created by global value chains calls for different mechanisms to address this challenge. They develop a novel approach based on the logic of the interdependencies germane to the co-specialized nature of value chains. These interdependencies afford participants power to create markets for social justice in which behavior that drives outcomes towards adequate value distribution is economically and socially rewarded. These dynamics turn GVCs into their own de-facto ‘regulators’ with the power to self-correct for distributional distortions.

The contributions of the book are at the center of current debates in policy milieu, academic circles and corporate boards regarding human rights, social inequality, and the role of the private sector in advancing social goals. They received renewed importance in contemporary discussions regarding the future of global value chains as the predominant mode of organizing value creation and the governance challenges they raise in a complex global world.