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The burgeoning literature on global value chains (GVCs) has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy, but within this context, the role played by corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to evolve. New research in the past decade allows us to better understand how CSR is linked to industrial clusters and GVCs. With geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global South, lead firms in GVCs have been under growing pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of CSR. This is leading to a confluence of \"private governance\" (corporate codes of conduct and monitoring), \"social governance\" (civil society pressure on business from labor organizations and non-governmental organizations), and \"public governance\" (government policies to support gains by labor groups and environmental activists). This new form of \"synergistic governance\" is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of GVCs and industrial clusters, as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in GVCs and clusters.

Social upgrading does not inherently follow economic upgrading; rather, they present a complex interplay. This paper, focusing on China, utilizes the coupling coordination degree and a panel regression model to shed light on the intricate interaction between social upgrading and economic upgrading. It is found that the coupling coordination degree of social and economic upgrading in China has improved from 0.33 to 0.49 since the mid-1990s, undergoing a shift from a stage of slight imbalance to low-level coordination. However, significant regional disparities are present in terms of economic upgrading, social upgrading, and their coupling coordination degree. Developed areas exhibit a higher degree of coupling coordination compared to less developed regions, indicating a connection between the coupling coordination degree and the level of economic growth. Economic globalization, public governance, and the legal environment positively impact the coupling coordination between social and economic upgrading, while economic privatization and corporate violations of law exert negative effects. The paper concludes with policy discussions for enhancing the coupling coordination between social and economic upgrading.

The focus on the concept of upgrading in the study of global production networks has expanded from economic upgrading to encompass social and environmental upgrading. However, rare research pays attention to the complex interplay among these three aspects. This paper tries to integrate the economic, social, and environmental upgrading into an analytical framework through the lens of coupling coordination. Using the Granger causality test and panel regression model, it provides empirical evidence and an explanation of the triad’s interaction based on the Chinese case study. It is found that, over the past twenty-five years from 1996 to 2020, China has seen a significant improvement in the coupling coordination of economic, social, and environmental upgrading with the coordination degree rising from 0.35 to 0.51, though it remains at a low level of coordination. Regional disparities in economic upgrading are more pronounced than those in social and environmental upgrading, and the inter-group disparities between economic and environmental upgrading have widened following the economic crisis. Panel regression analysis shows that economic globalization, public governance, legal environment, and environmental regulation positively influence the coupling coordination of the three types of upgrading, while economic privatization and corporate violations of law tend to have a negative impact.

PurposeThis study examines the impact of China's trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on Africa's global value chain (GVC) participation and economic upgrading.Design/methodology/approachThe study covered 48 African countries, cutting across the western, eastern, central, southern and northern subregions to cover the heterogeneity of the continent. The study adopted feasible generalized least squares panel VAR-Granger causality Wald test and system generalized methods of moments techniques for estimation.FindingsOverall, China's FDI to Africa and US-Africa trade have a linear relationship with Africa's GVC involvement and economic upgrading. The findings suggest that although China-Africa trade has a positive impact on GVC engagement and upgrading, the marginal effect decreases in the face of US-Africa and EU-Africa trade.Originality/valueThis study provides new evidence on the impact of China's FDI and trade on African economies' GVC participation and economic upgrading. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically explore the effects of China's FDI and trade on Africa's GVC integration and economic upgrading as well as from the perspectives of backward and forward GVC participation. Furthermore, the study empirically examines whether the effects of Africa's economic cooperation with China relative to its GVC engagement differ from those of Europe (EU) and the US via a comparative regression.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper includes two interconnected objectives. The first is to provide a reconceptualisation of social value creation as social constraint alleviation. The second is to respond to the call put forward by Giuliani and Macchi (2014) to produce synergies between bodies of literature exploring the development impact of businesses. The paper focuses on ideas from the global value chain/global production networks (GVC/GPN), business and human rights, corporate social responsibility (CSR), international business (IB) and (social) entrepreneurship literatures. Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers a reconceptualisation of social value creation by building on the synergies, complementarities and limitations of existing concepts identified through the literature review. Findings – The reconceptualisation of social value creation put forward in this paper contributes to the literature in the following way. It offers a useful and clear definition of the term “social” (Devinney, 2009), and it attends to the limitations of the constraint concept as put forward by Ted London and his collaborators (London, 2011). Furthermore, it sketches out the basic ideas of a two-system approach to allow for the differentiation between symptom treatment and root cause alleviation. Finally, it offers a refinement of Wettstein’s (2012) proposed capability-based remedial action concept. The paper furthermore proposes that there are three distinct ways in which businesses generally respond to social constraints. Originality/value – The paper illustrates how the redefined concept of social value creation can connect different bodies of literature and help make sense of existing empirical results, without engaging in definitional debates.

The aim of the study was to assess the integration into regional or global value chains and economic upgrading prospects in the East African Community (EAC) bloc. We conducted a comparative analysis of participation in global value chain (GVC) among EAC member states and assessed the determinants of economic upgrading in the region using UNCTAD-Eora GVC Panel data from 2005 to 2018. The results show that Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are relatively better integrated through two channels of GVC participation, namely foreign value added (FVA) and domestic value added. However, for indirect-value added channel, Kenya had the highest score, the rest member states had relatively lower mean scores. The overall results show that EAC’s participation in GVC still resides in upstream low- and middle-value-added production activities, which limits its competitiveness compared to other regions. The empirical results show the positive and significant effect of domestic credit, foreign direct investment, quality of institutions and FVA on economic upgrading. However, a positive but insignificant association with economic upgrading was observed for human capital and GDP per capita. Infrastructure quality was negatively and significantly associated with economic upgrading. These results suggest that improving infrastructure connectivity and further strengthening institutional governance would reduce trade costs and promote greater investments, product and service diversification, leading to deeper economic upgrading in the region. At the policy level, the adoption of effective national and regional industrial policies would promote innovation and human capital development, attract foreign direct investment and help address market and coordination deficiencies in the region.

Less-developed countries benefit from being connected to technologically and economically advanced countries. The well-documented mechanisms for this cross-national flow of knowledge all involve interfirm connections, such as trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and alliances. We examine the potential of a different mechanism - interpersonal ties abroad - that has only recently become practicable, owing to advances in communication and transportation technologies, globalization, and increased migration. We investigate when business knowledge obtained from interpersonal ties in more-developed countries is more useful than locally sourced knowledge. Using a sample of South African managers, we find that knowledge from more-developed countries is not always more useful. Rather, overseas knowledge is preferable when novel and accessible: that is, when new-to-the-industry knowledge is needed, when there is already a strong tie, and when the knowledge does not involve a long discussion. Conversely, local knowledge is preferable when new-to-the-industry knowledge is not needed, when the interpersonal tie is a weak tie, and when a longer discussion is warranted. This study demonstrates the value of connections between individuals in countries at different levels of development as sources of useful knowledge, and suggests that international business research will benefit from exploring further the networks of individuals in addition to those of firms.

Over many decades, buildings have been recognised as a significant area contributing to the negative impacts on the environment over their lifecycle, accelerating climate change. In return, climate change also impacts on buildings with extreme heatwaves occurring more frequently and raising the earth's temperature. The operation phase is the most extended period over a building's lifespan. In this period, office buildings consume most energy and emit the highest amount of greenhouse gas pollution into the environment. Building upgrading to improve energy efficiency seems to be the best way to cut pollution as the existing building stock is massive. The paper presents an economic analysis of energy efficiency upgrade of buildings with a focus of office buildings. The paper identifies upgrading activities that are commonly undertaken to upgrade energy efficiency of office buildings and a case study of three office buildings in Sydney, Australia has been used to analyse the results. The upgrading activities can improve the energy performance of the case study buildings from 3 stars to 5 stars NABERS energy rating in compliance with the mandatory requirement in the Australian government's energy policy. With the potential increase in energy price, energy efficiency upgrading will become more affordable, but currently, most of them, except solar panels and motion sensors show a negative return and would not be undertaken if they did not also contribute to higher rental income and an increased life span of the building. The upgrading discussed in the paper represent a potentially attractive alternative to demolition and building anew.

This paper links global value chain (GVC) integration and operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the context of host economies upgrading. Economic upgrading is referred to as higher exported value added that has been generated in the domestic economy as a result of foreign direct investment (FDI). Particular attention is paid to the impact of GVC on selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies. An econometric model is estimated using panel data of 44 sectors for four CEE economies over the period 1995–2018. A primary source of data is the latest edition of the TiVA (Trade in Value Added). The most important variable in explaining domestic contribution to GVC was the flow of foreign inputs. Backward linkages are crucial for building the GVC presence of the economies. The variables of interest – FDI stocks and flows – have in general a negative impact on the level of domestic content in analysed economies.

Upgrading is the latest buzzword in global value chain research, especially with regard to producers in countries of the Global South: participation in global food value chains has the potential of raising smallholder incomes and achieving decent work, very much in the spirit of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, we argue that the conceptual foundation of upgrading, which is at the heart of many value chain development initiatives, deserves scrutiny and a stronger focus on interorganizational learning among value chain actors to serve its purpose.Global value chains have the potential of contributing to the achievement of multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In agriculture, the integration of producers into food value chains has created new employment in farming and processing, although it may also lead to precarious jobs, forced labor, and riskier environments for farmers and workers. The \"upgrading\" concept put forward by value chain researchers claims to address these concerns as it describes how producers can improve their position within a value chain, and hence, their livelihoods. The paper critically evaluates the conceptual foundation of \"upgrading\" and its applicability in food value chain governance for the realization of SDGs related to responsible production and decent work. An overlooked element contributing to upgrading and the achievement of these SDGs is learning among value chain actors. The paper argues how the shortcomings in the concept can be addressed in practice through interorganizational learning in multi-stakeholder platforms.