1,720,969 research outputs found
Upgrading the global garment industry:internationalization, capabilities and sustainability
Full text linkThe covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the interconnected nature of many business activities. The loss of orders from global retailers in developed economies has worsened the living conditions for many garment-industry workers in emerging economies, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Vietnam. Many suppliers in these countries have remained locked into relatively low-value, low-margin, low-skilled activities. However, in a relatively little noticed phenomenon, some suppliers have been able to upgrade their capabilities and have internationalized, establishing facilities abroad to strengthen ties to existing buyers. The contributions to this book document this phenomenon, highlighting the factors that promote or hinder higher levels of internationalization, the conditions that influence the development of suppliers’ capabilities, and how some firms achieve higher levels of sustainable production. They do so from various perspectives, including international business, global value chain, strategy, innovation, operations management and sociological perspectives. Together the book’s chapters represent an important contribution to the literature, focusing on important aspects of GVCs using firm-centric analysis that the existing literature tends to downplay. By enabling us to understand those challenges better, those contributions can help to provide ways for suppliers to overcome them. Collectively, therefore, we hope the chapters in this book offer a positive message for suppliers, multinational buyers, and workers within GVCs during a time of unprecedented challenges.<br/
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Why apparel suppliers are locked into the upgrading ladder in Bangladesh: An institutional and business systems perspective
Full text linkResearch drawing on the global value chain (GVC) literature highlights how industries/firms upgrade on the technical, social and functional ‘ladder’; however, studies have ignored why firms in a particular industry are locked into a particular stage on the upgrading ladder. Using a firm- and institutional-level analysis, our study investigates a critical case from the Bangladeshi garment industry and explores the reasons, rooted in institutions and the business system, that cause firms to become ‘locked in’ at a particular stage of the upgrading ladder. We analyse the nature of the institutions and business systems of Bangladesh and examine how the characteristics of institutions and business systems affect firms’ lock-in. Our study explores four causes of ‘lock-in’: i) a lack of socially-constructed entrepreneurial vision (i.e. focusing on multiple venture creation, political affiliation and power, supply and manufacturing capacity and profit maximization) and ii) ownership and management characteristics, which do not support upgrading to own brand manufacturing (OBM), iii) the nature of governance between buyers and suppliers, and iv) inconsistency in institutional characteristics. The latter issue is seen, for example, in low levels of trust between firms, a lack of government incentives for design lab development and brand internationalisation, inadequate management of bank financing for upgrading, a lack of intermediary institutions to support internationalisation, and low-quality management education. Our study contributes to the GVC and business systems literature by exploring the reasons for the ‘lock-in’ condition that existing literatures have ignored
Internationalization of Vietnamese Garment Manufacturers from an Innovation Perspective: Toward a U-Shaped Internationalization Path
No full textInnovation is a prerequisite for growing firms in a competitive market that is increasingly structured within global value chains. These global highways are organized and managed by multinational companies (MNCs), which are continuously seeking international locations possessing a business community that could add value by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of product and service provision on a broad scale. Such locations are often found within emerging economies.This single case study from the garment industry in Vietnam explores how the case company internationalizes and the role played by innovation in shaping the internationalization path. The frame for the study is the global value chain and its associated upgrading models. A U-shaped internationalization model is found for the case company.. Efficiency and reactive innovations play a crucial role for the first degree of internationalization on the global outsourcing market, and the domestic market and proactive innovations related to design and brand play a crucial role as a pre-requisite for a second degree of internationalization. The study also contributes to the literature by aligning the internationalization path with an innovation path (reactive, interactive, and proactive innovation). Finally, the study concludes that the upgrading theory drawn from the global value chain frame should and could be aligned with the broader frame of innovation theory. <br/
Dynamic capabilities in apparel manufacturing firms in the context of global value chains: the case of Vietnam
No full textThis chapter examines the impact of the global value chain on the development of dynamic capabilities in the Vietnamese apparel export sector. Despite impressive growth rates and gradual upgrading along the global apparel value chain, Vietnamese suppliers remain largely reliant on low-cost labour and imported materials, facing the challenge of developing new capabilities to sustain their global competitiveness. Our study approaches this challenge from a dynamic capabilities perspective with the aim to understand the strategic options for Vietnamese apparel exporters to enhance their competitiveness. Based on a qualitative study of six cases, we identify two patterns of dynamic capability development and a number of GVC-dependent and home country institutional constraints. We discuss these findings, propose a blended logic of dynamic capability development, and suggest policy implications as well as future research possibilities
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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