The New Offshoring of Jobs and Global Development

This volume examines the issue of global consolidation and industrial upgrading and its promise and perils for development. It introduces an analytical framework for linking jobs in the industrial structures of both advanced and developing economies through "global value chains." (A value chain describes all the steps required to bring a product from conception to production to distributionto use by the consumer. When different steps occur in several different countries the process becomes a global value chain.) The book reviews the strategies of retailers, marketers, and manufacturers and considers the conceptualization of jobs in the global economy—not by their location in particular industries or countries, but by their role in global value chains.