Table 13 - uploaded by Martijn Boersma
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Many of the great international corporations of the past have now largely been disembodied into global value chains. This chapter considers the implications of the continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services, and how this has impacted considerably on the economies and societies b...
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Globalization refers to the growing integration of economies, culture and societies around the world; has become one of the important topic among the statesmen, corporate, academia etc. over the past decade. Globalization generally means the process of transformation of local phenomenon into global ones. Globalization is one of the most important p...
Citations
... In an interview with Libération (Féraud, 2016), Sadin summarizes the real-world negative effects of Silicon Valley's promises, citing the precarity of employment in start-up cultures, the minimization of job security and collective bargaining rights, and the payoffs counted in stock options that may prove valueless. In the same interview Sadinobserving what separate social scientific studies have since substantiated (Clarke & Boersma, 2019)equally draws attention to the appalling labour conditions of high-tech factory workers in countries such as China, Thailand and Malaysia, and Big Tech's aggressive avoidance of tens of billions of dollars in taxes (Tang & Ngo, 2012). Even if this is a minority report on Silicon Valley's effects, it is thus one whose foundations find substantial support in a diverse range of quarters. ...
This paper explores the extraordinary symbolic resonance of Silicon Valley in global cultures. Through a case study examining a large electronic corpus of French newspaper articles (2014–2019), we demonstrate the extent to which the Californian tech hub’s reputation has been repurposed worldwide, probing in particular metaphorical uses of its name in descriptions of countless other places around the globe. Harnessing the explanatory power of Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, our analysis reveals how comparing a site to Silicon Valley carries a variety of discursive functions as a tool of political and commercial rhetoric with tangible advantages in a globalized setting. Uses of Silicon Valley to evoke a more prosperous future are, however, contested in the corpus, most visibly in interviews with political philosopher Eric Sadin. We argue that Silicon Valley as heterotopia thus reflects and reconfigures both our highest hopes and deepest fears amid the unsettling upheaval of the digital age.
... Though the number of listed corporations in the United States peaked in the 1990s and then began a precipitous decline with the bursting of the internet bubble and the concentration of the banks, the market capitalization of US listed corporations continued to grow exponentially, with the global domination of the US platform technology corporations (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook) (Clarke & Boersma 2019;Clarke 2019b). In the rest of the world there was a sustained increase in the number of listed corporations, with the total of global listed corporations increasing from 15,000 in 1975 to around 45,000 in 2015 ( Figure 1). ...
... As global corporations have developed, they have transformed their structure and operations immensely, distributing the supply of materials and components, and the assembly of finished products, throughout the emerging economies but with a focus on the Asia Pacific, while retaining firm control of finance, innovation, design, and marketing in their national headquarters (Clarke & Boersma 2019). The implications of the global value chain for corporate governance are profound and multidimensional in terms of control, accountability, and taxation. ...
The recognition of the profound impact of corporations on the economies and societies of all countries of the world has focused attention on the growing importance of corporate governance. There is an ongoing diversity of corporate governance systems, based on historical cultural and institutional differences that involve different approaches to the values and objectives of business activity. Sound corporate governance is universally recognised as essential to market integrity and efficiency, providing a vital underpinning for financial stability and economic growth. As the adequacy of the existing dominant paradigms of corporate governance are increasingly challenged, the search for coherent new paradigms is a vital task for corporate governance in the future.
This article examines financialisation of non-financial corporations (NFCs) in developing countries using the example of the Dangote Business Group in Nigeria, the largest conglomerate on the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE). Our findings suggest that Nigeria is characterised by a financialisation process, where speculative activities expand in banking and capital markets, but not in manufacturing NFCs. Macro-financialisation in banking and capital markets does little to provide finance for Nigeria’s manufacturing NFCs. In the face of insufficient financing from banks and the capital market, NFCs rely on internal funding and trade credit within diversified business groups (DBGs). At the firm level, the financial accounts of Nigerian manufacturing NFCs such as the Dangote Group show weak evidence of speculative financial activities and high levels of investment in productive capacity. This results from a combination of volatile capital markets with excessive risk for NFCs and profitable opportunities in the real economy. While these two factors curtail the negative implications of speculative macro-financial activities, monopoly capitalist concentration processes in DBGs work to undermine effective demand through the disproportionate allocation of profit at the expense of wages.
The term ‘modern slavery’ constitutes a broad non-legal umbrella term that refers to a range of abusive practices including, but not limited to, forced labour, bonded labour, human trafficking and child slavery. While the most severe forms of labour exploitation represent instances of modern slavery, focusing on labour abuses more broadly is also important as it is not always clear at what point non-compliance with labour standards seeps into cases of criminal exploitation. This Special Issue focuses on what the large- and small-scale risk factors are that can cause working conditions to deteriorate, on how people can become trapped in exploitative conditions and on what can be done to prevent and remedy labour abuses. It does this by exploring the macro-level, specifically by examining global value chains and the labour exploitation within the global production regime; by exploring the meso-level, by focusing on the market-based character of business and human rights regulation; and by looking at the micro-level by examining labour regimes on factory floors and in private residences.
While the efforts by actors on the buyer-side of value chains – such as brands and retailers – to address upstream labour abuses are well documented, there is a lack of research into how actors on the production-side of value chains – such as raw material producers – can identify and address downstream labour risks. This research presents the findings of an action research project that focused on the Australian cotton industry. By applying a sense-making lens, we propose four properties that can be used to identify labour risk in global value chains, providing insights into the capacity of producers to address downstream labour abuses. We suggest that there is a possibility for a ‘book-end’ approach that combines upstream and downstream actions by buyers and producers in global value chains.
Recent legislative efforts to address modern slavery emphasise corporate disclosure as the primary regulatory tool. New modern slavery disclosure laws harden the expectation that business will conduct itself responsibly; however, they are founded on a soft approach to enforcement which is essentially outsourced to the market. This paper questions the effectiveness of this disclosure-based enforcement mechanism, which primarily relies on a narrowly defined concept of ‘the market’ as the basis for its regulatory strategy. Drawing on comparisons with alternative legislative enforcement frameworks to counter foreign bribery and illegal logging, this paper highlights the opportunities and limitations of reliance on market forces for regulation and suggests a path forward for enhancing the modern slavery enforcement approach.
