Stefano Ponte

• PhD
• Professor at Copenhagen Business School

A critical account of the rise of celebrity-driven “compassionate consumption” Cofounded by the rock star Bono in 2006, Product RED exemplifies a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy. Brand Aid offers a deeply informed and stinging critique of “compassionate consumptio...

Certification of products from aquatic farming - aquaculture – is contributing to sustainable production, but it also has serious limits. The implication of these limits is that certification needs to be seen as but one of a wider array of strategies for regulating sustainable production. Assumptions that countries in the Global South are unwilling...

This introductory paper to the special issue on governing global value chains (GVCs) focuses on the concept of governance as the dimension of GVCs that has received the most theoretical and empirical attention to date. After a brief introduction of the GVC concept in relation to the literature on economic globalization, we review the three main int...

Developing country governments and industries have been reluctant to support ecolabels, fearing their potentially protectionist effects. This reluctance has been countered by international organizations (such as FAO) and ecolabel initiatives with assurances of transparency, non-discrimination, and technical assistance. The analysis of the Marine St...

Africa's role in the global economy is evolving as a result of new corporate strategies, changing trade regulations, and innovative ways of overseeing the globalized production and distribution of goods both within Africa and internationally. African participants in the global economy, now faced with demands for higher levels of performance and qua...

This introduction to a special section on global value chains and global wealth chains elaborates on the concept of entanglement as a way to understand dynamics of value capture, accumulation and inequality in contemporary capitalism. The authors first review the analytical framework they have proposed for analyzing entangled chains based on two di...

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are transnational governance instruments that can be leveraged to pursue sustainable development in global value chains. They have proliferated since the 1990s in terms of their number and the share of global production they govern. This paper shares some key insights arising from the considerable body of li...

Climate change and other global environmental challenges are pushing societies and political systems to critically reflect on the role of business as a problem and as a solution to these crises. Sustainability has become a commodity itself, to be traded, bought, sold and managed like all others. How lead firms in global value chains address sustain...

Value and wealth creation, capture and protection are important features of contemporary global capitalism. However, global value chains and global wealth chains have been studied mostly in isolation from each other. In this article, we address this limitation by revealing the entanglements of value and wealth in the gold sector. We develop a typol...

Power is a central, but largely undertheorized, concept for scholars of global value chains (GVCs). In this introduction to a special issue on power and inequality in GVCs, the authors summarize the key insights from the articles gathered here and explain how the collection advances our understanding of the types and forms of power operating in GVC...

Much of the literature on environmental sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) focuses on how ‘lead firms’ (usually global buyers or retailers) can improve the environmental conditions of production among their various layers of suppliers. This approach focuses on the vertical governance dynamics of environmental upgrading along with GVCs. In...

There is increasing interest in the study of globalization on whether the emergence and consolidation of global value chains (GVCs) have exacerbated inequalities within and across nations and/or how GVCs may be leveraged to mitigate them. Although power asymmetries have been identified as a central factor shaping (un)successful GVC participation, d...

A key concern of the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literature relates to whether and how actors, especially in the Global South, upgrade by generating and capturing more value. To date, such research has predominantly focused on the economic and social aspects of upgrading. In this article, we leverage selected insigh...

Power asymmetries in the governance of value chains mean that inequalities in access to resources and share of value added are skewed against smaller players. Policies enforcing market rules and ensuring fairness are ineffective when power is deeply entrenched, necessitating different rules to address such inequalities. South Africa's Black Economi...

In this article, we examine selected sustainability initiatives from the perspective of local communities to improve our understanding of how putative participatory schemes manage legitimacy. Understanding the legitimacy dynamics of sustainability initiatives is important, as it potentially minimizes the power gaps likely to open across scales and...

Today, production processes have become fragmented with a range of activities divided among firms and workers across borders. These global value chains are being strongly promoted by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, but social and political backlash is mounting in a growing variety of forms. Thi...

This chapter analyses the patterns of poverty, prosperity, and rural transformation in Tanzania through longitudinal research examining livelihoods and asset change in a twenty-year period. We argue that some current measures of rural transformation are inadequate for capturing forms of change that matter to rural Africans. We consider in detail so...

Constructing longitudinal research has, for all the authors, entailed long, and sometimes difficult, sometimes funny, always moving, personal stories. This chapter explains how the studies were conducted, both the original research and the subsequent revisits, and how the researchers coped with having to conduct them. The authors of this Epilogue c...

This chapter highlights how sustainability and green capital accumulation go hand in hand, operating on the back of a structural logic that allows the extraction of value from producers as they attempt to improve their environmental performance. The case study of the wine industry in South Africa is, at a superficial level, a success story of econo...

Prosecco, a wine that two decades ago was virtually unknown outside of Italy and was considered inferior to other sparkling wines, has become immensely popular. But how did Prosecco producers gear up to meet a booming demand in a highly regulated wine industry such as Italy's? Is this an example of an inclusive growth trajectory? Who is capturing t...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are promoted as a tool to manage the world's ocean and coastal resources more sustainably. In recent years, the protected areas management paradigm —including MPA management—has started to promote inclusive and collaborative practices. At least on paper, this shift, and the multi-stakeholder engagement and partnerships...

This paper bridges the understanding of power in the global value chain literature and the analysis of market power and barriers to entry in competition economics. It draws on competition economics to provide a better understanding of the ways in which bargaining power between firms shapes patterns of value creation and capture along value chains....

In spring 2016, Starbucks launched its first single-origin specialty coffee from South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This coffee was produced with support from a partnership known as Kahawa Bora—a value chain development intervention (VCDI) combining a coffee corporation (Starbucks), a celebrity (Ben Affleck) and a development agency (U...

Sustainability has become important in the operation of the global economy and its regulatory structure, leading significant shifts in the way powerful ‘lead firms’ in global value chains approach sustainability. In this paper, I argue that private, value chain-oriented forms of sustainability governance are not addressing the environmental problem...

Exploring how transnational environmental governance and the operation of global value chains (GVCs) intersect is key in explaining the circumstances under which mandatory disclosure can improve the environmental footprint of business operations. We investigate how the governance dynamics of the tanker shipping value chain (a major emitter of green...

The changing shape of sustainability governance has been a key academic and policy concern in the past two decades, as part of a wider debate on the interactions between public and private authority in governing the economy, society, and the environment. In this article, we contribute to these debates by examining how these interactions operate loc...

This article analyses patterns of poverty, prosperity and rural transformation in Tanzania through longitudinal research examining livelihoods and asset change in a twenty-year period. We argue that some current measures of rural transformation are inadequate for capturing forms of change that matter to rural Africans. We consider in detail some of...

Responding to stakeholder pressure, firms are increasingly challenged to reduce their environmental impacts. This chapter reviews the potential upgrading trajectories for firms engaged in global value chains (GVCs) to effectively reduce the impacts on the environment of all activities linked to their products - not just those that are carried out i...

Edited by Stefano Ponte, Professor of International Political Economy, Director, Centre for Business and Development Studies, Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark, Gary Gereffi, Director of the Duke University Global Value Chains Center and Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Duke University, US and Gale Raj-Reichert, Lecturer in Economic Geograp...

The global value chains (GVC) framework has been shaped by many knowledge and research communities, drawing upon diverse groups of scholars with institutional support from numerous universities, foundations and professional associations. The idea of GVCs has roots in debates over development theory stretching back to the early formulations of centr...

The Handbook on Global Value Chains provides us with a rich landscape and journey through the phenomenon of globalized production. In this final chapter, we outline a number of new or forward-looking issues we believe will become increasingly important and indeed critical to understand with more granularity, as the ‘world of GVCs’ is changing and t...

Economic and environmental upgrading in global value chains are intertwined processes. The existing global value chain literature has so far articulated the relationships between economic and social upgrading but has only recently started to explore the challenges of environmental upgrading from the perspective of suppliers in the Global South. In...

The interaction of sustainability governance and global value chains has crucial implications the world over. When it comes to sustainability the last decade has witnessed the birth of hybrid forms of governance where business, civil society and public actors interact at different levels, leading to a focus on concepts of legitimacy within multi-st...

Although the literature on multi-stakeholder initiatives for sustainability has grown in recent years, it is scattered across several academic fields, making it hard to ascertain how individual disciplines, such as business ethics, can further contribute to the debate. Based on an extensive review of the literature on certification and principle-ba...

The configurations of global value chains and production networks are constantly changing, leading to new trajectories and geographical distributions of value creation and capture. In this article, we offer a 40-year evolutionary perspective on power and governance in the global coffee value chain and production network. We identify three distinct...

Although the literature on multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) for sustainability has grown in recent years, it is scattered across several academic fields, making it hard to ascertain how individual disciplines such as business ethics can further contribute to the debate. Based on an extensive review of the literature on certification and princip...

A timely guest post as the International Studies Association’s (#ISA2019) annual meeting kicked off in Toronto. The topic is once again the journal Third World Quarterly which is sponsoring the reception of ISA’s Global Development Section and the broader questions these discussions raise for higher education and academic publishing.

Tackling climate change and other environmental crises entails a critical reflection on processes and outcomes that are behind sustainability management by business. Sustainability has become a commodity itself, to be traded, bought, sold and managed like all others. How lead firms in global value chains (GVCs) address sustainability issues has bec...

Power has been a foundational concept in global value chain (GVC) research. Yet, in most GVC scholarship, power is not explicitly defined and is applied as a unitary concept, rather than as having multiple dimensions. Clarifying the concept of power has become particularly urgent in recent years as GVC research has proliferated beyond dyads of tran...

Ports are crucial hubs in the functioning of the global economy, and maritime transport is a major emitter of air pollutants. Ports have considerable potential for promoting environmental upgrading in maritime transport and along global value chains more generally, but so far have been only partially successful in doing so. We examine results, limi...

Power' has been a foundational concept in examining global value chains and production networks for understanding patterns and dynamics in the global political economy. Yet, in most GVC scholarship, power is not explicitly defined and is applied as a unitary concept, rather than as having multiple dimensions. Clarifying the concept of power has bec...

This article contributes to current debates on the potential and limitations of transnational environmental governance, addressing in particular the issue of how private and public regulation compete and/or reinforce each other – and with what results. One of the most influential approaches to emerge in recent years has been that of “orchestration....

D printing (3DP) has been heralded as a revolutionary technology that can alter the way production is organized across time and space – with important redistributive effects on geography and size of production activities. In this article, we examine the impacts that a widespread adoption of 3DP could have on restructuring, upgrading and distributin...

Learning Objectives for this chapter: • Understand the challenges business faces in addressing the environmental impact of their activities • Appreciate how business environmental strategy may align and/or clash with international, regional and national regulation • Understand the potential and limitations of self-regulation and multi-stakeholder...

Nimble trade and industrial policy is essential for Least-Developed Countries (LDCs) to thrive in a world of global value chains (GVCs). “Adaptive states” in LDCs need to create and exploit policy space in national decision-making, build specific production capabilities to participate and meaningfully capture value in GVCs, and handle policy stretc...

In this article, we examine the relations between global value chain governance and environmental upgrading in maritime shipping. Drawing from interviews with global shipping companies and major buyers of shipping services (cargo-owners), we reveal the key issues and challenges faced in improving the environmental performance of maritime transporta...

In the past two decades, convention theory has been applied in various branches of agro-food studies, providing analytical and theoretical insight for examining alternative food networks, coordination and governance in agro-food value chains, and the so-called 'quality turn' in food production and consumption. In this article, I examine convention...

As multiple visions for a Green Economy seek to become real, so are green economic initiatives in the global South multiplying. These can offer integration into wealth-generating markets – as well as displacement, alienation, conflict and opportunities for ‘green washing’. The articles included in this collection bring together a multidisciplinary...

The authors show how certification assembles ‘sustainable’ territories through a complex layering of regulatory authority in which both government and nongovernment entities claim rule-making authority, sometimes working together, sometimes in parallel, sometimes competitively. It is argued that territorialisation is accomplished not just through (...

In this article we examine the transnational governance of sustainable biofuels and its coexistence with the WTO trade regime. The analysis of how the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is shaping transnational biofuel governance shows deep and mutual dependence between public and private. The EU relies on a private system of compliance and verifi...

Symposium including three articles: Ponte, S. and C. Daugberg 'Biofuel sustainability and the formation of transnational hybrid governance' Henriksen, L.F. 'The global network of biofuel sustainability standard-setters' Laurent, B. 'The politics of European agencements: constructing a market of sustainable biofuels'

In this article, we examine the upgrading trajectories of selected aquaculture value chains in four Asian countries and the links between upgrading and three factors of value chain governance: coordination mechanisms; types of drivers; and domestic regulation. We find instances of improving products, processes, and value chain coordination—while “m...

This paper aims at enriching the literature on international business (IB) studies to include insights from Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis to better explain how MNCs can orchestrate a global network organization. A first important contribution of the GVC literature is that it shifts the focus from single firms to their value chains, providing in...

This paper aims at enriching the literature on international business (IB) studies to include insights from Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis to better explain how MNCs can orchestrate a global network organization. A first important contribution of the GVC literature is that it shifts the focus from single firms to their value chains, providing in...

In this paper I propose to push the frontier of global value chain (GVC) governance analysis through the concept of ‘polarity’. Much of the existing GVC literature has focused on ‘unipolar’ value chains, where one group of ‘lead firms’ inhabiting a specific function in a chain plays a dominant role in governing it. Some scholars have explored the d...

The willingness of public authority to delegate social and environmental regulation to the private sector has varied from sector to sector, but has often led to the establishment of ‘voluntary’ standards and certifications on sustainability. Many of these have taken the form of ‘stewardship councils’ and ‘sustainability roundtables’ and have been d...

Since the 1990s, governments in both the global North and South have been heavily promoting liquid biofuels and enacting policies as a result of concerns related to climate change mitigation, energy security, and rural development. Liquid biofuels have been portrayed as an attractive technological pathway because they can address disparate problems...

Consumers, partnering with corporations and celebrities, are forming new alliances in international development through what we call ‘Brand Aid’ initiatives. At a time of shifting relationships between public and private aid, commodities are sold as the means of achieving development for recipients and good feelings for consumers simultaneously. In...

Consumers, partnering with corporations and celebrities, are forming new alliances in international development through what we call ‘Brand Aid’ initiatives. At a time of shifting relationships between public and private aid, commodities are sold as the means of achieving development for recipients and good feelings for consumers simultaneously. In...

In this article, we review the evolution and current status of global value chain (GVC) governance theory and take some initial steps toward a broader theory of governance through an exercise in ‘modular theory-building’. We focus on two GVC governance theories to which we previously contributed: a theory of linking and a theory of conventions. The...

Products certified according to their environmental and social sustainability are becoming an important feature of production, trade and consumption in the agro-food sector. ‘Sustainability networks’ are behind the emergence and growth of these new product forms, often evolving into multi-stakeholder initiatives that establish and manage base codes...

With increasing fragmentation of production between independent firms that are spatially dispersed and are responsible for different steps of the production process, a Global Value Chain approach is employed to examine how ‘lead firms’ shape the green features of upstream activities. Comparative case studies in the Italian furniture industry (Ikea,...

Standards are used to govern an increasing share of global food trade, and have been interpreted by academics both as market access barriers and opportunities for low-income country producers, exporters and workers. Donors have mostly chosen to treat them as opportunities and today finance a variety of programmes and projects aimed at supporting st...