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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper explores knowledge services clusters (KSCs) as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster, in particular in emerging economies: KSCs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower-cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services. Based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring, and data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), major properties and contingencies of KSC growth are discussed and compared with both high-tech clusters and low-cost manufacturing clusters. Special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on KSC growth: It is proposed that KSCs attract most projects if …
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
In this paper, we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co-evolution of sustainability standards, based on the case of the global coffee industry. We find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation, for example in the cases of Fairtrade, UTZ Certified and the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C). In turn, supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of …