Greening the networked economy - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 164

Since the early 1990s, it has become mainstream to interpret and ana-
lyse the organisation of the economy in terms of commodity (or value)
networks and chains, often transnational or global in character. After
the Fordist mass production period, during which single companies
were giving pride of place, in an era marked by globalisation networks
and chains are the key units of analysis to understand the organisation
of the (global) economy. Economic and industrial network analysis
(Axelsson and Easton, 1988 ;Hakansson and Johanson, 1993 ; Grabher,
1993 ), global commodity chain analysis (cf. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz,
1994 ), the agro-food network and commodity complexes (Goodman
and Watts, 1997 ; McMichael, 1996 ), convention theory (Ponte and
Gibbon, 2005 ), and even the business systems approach 2 (Whitley,
1996 ; 1999 )-while being in debate among each other - all focus on
networks and chains to understand how the contemporary economy
is (re)organised and works. At the centre of these studies and appro-
aches lie the multiple linkages, relations and interdependencies of for-
mally independent firms (or 'nodes'), which are organised increasingly
on a global scale. These linkages are characterised by flows of material
resources, finances, capital, knowledge and information. Of key im-
portance in these chain and network studies are questions of (de)regu-
lation and governance. In this literature, regulation usually refers to
external state or intergovernmental rules that are imposed on - and
thus structure - the networks and chains, whereas governance refers
to questions of internal network and chain coordination and struc-
turing. 3 Humphrey and Schmitz ( 2002 ) have redefined governance in

2

For instance, Whitley ( 1996 : 417) interprets the “world economy as generally
weakly organized in terms of stable networks of information and material
flows . . . and in terms of stable transnational institutions which could support
and reproduce such networks.”

3

Usually a distinction is made between forms of coordination in chains and
networks and modes of governance. Although coherent modes of governance
refer to the entire chain, often formulated in terms of buyer- or supplier-driven
chains, forms of coordination differ between segments in a chain or network
(Ponte and Gibbon, 2005 ). Modes of governance were originally dichotomised
in producer-driven chains and buyer-driven chains, putting the power emphasis
upside or downside the value chain (cf. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994 ; Raikes
et al., 2000 ). A general tendency is often identified in the global economy of
power shifts towards the buyer-end of chains and networks, with captive
suppliers in developing countries. The extent to which this actually happens
depends on the commodity chain involved (cf. cars versus food), among others.
The leading network-actor at the buyer side also may differ strongly among