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Professor Gary Gereffi |
Spring 2000 TTh, 12:40-1:55 pm 130 Soc/Psych Building (Zener Auditorium) |
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| (or by appointment) | ||
Organizations and Global Competitiveness
Soc. 142
There
is much debate about how societies can develop and become more competitive in
today's global economy. A basic premise
of this course is that international competitiveness requires an understanding
of the social structure of markets, which may be viewed as a network of buying
and supplying firms organized around the provision of finished goods and
services. These organizational chains
are increasingly global, and have complex and shifting governance structures
that specify the power relations among the organizations in the chain. This framework reveals surprising facts
about who controls global industries, which firms make the most money and why,
and how new business capabilities are emerging that will determine the
corporate leaders of tomorrow.
Attention
in the course will focus on the organizational dynamics of diverse global
industries (such as apparel and automobiles, banking and bicycles, computer
hardware and software, multimedia entertainment and e-commerce), and on the
competitive strategies of their leading firms.
The geographic spread of these industries encompasses North America,
Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, both as production
sites and markets. This course will
demonstrate that the economic activities that produce competitive societies are
socially embedded in complex organizational contexts that vary considerably
across time, geographical regions, and nations.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
There
will be one paper, a mid-term examination, and a group project involving the
creation of a Global Industry Website required for this course. The paper and the mid-term exam each count
for 30% of the course grade, and the Global Industry Website will count for
40%. The teaching assistants for this
course are: Damon Coletta (dvc1@duke.edu),
Political Science; Renan Levine
(renan.levine@duke.edu), Political
Science; and Martha Martinez (martinez@soc.duke.edu),
Sociology.
Mid-Term Exam. This will be a take-home, open-book
examination that will be handed out in class on Monday, March 7th,
and due back in class on Wednesday, March 9th. Completed exams must be
typed, and a page limit will be set. The drop-off procedure for exams will be
explained in class.
Global
Industry Websites. In addition
to a take-home exam and a research paper, there is a major group project required
in this course. Teams comprised of
5 students will be formed, each focusing on a different industry. Given the anticipated course enrollment of
90 students, there will be about 18 distinct industry teams.
Students will be given a list of industries from which to choose a topic for their website, or they also have the option of adding a new industry to the list. A comprehensive industry list could include the following general categories, which in many instances would need to be broken down into more specific products:
·
Primary products: Bananas, chocolate, coffee, fruit and vegetables, oil, timber.
·
Consumer nondurable
products: Apparel, footwear, sporting goods, toys,
video games.
·
Consumer durable products: Airplanes, automobiles, bicycles, computers, weapons.
·
Intermediate products: Computer software, hard disk drives, semiconductors, specialty
chemicals.
·
Services: Banking, entertainment, tourism.
Each industry website will be constructed according
to a series of key dimensions outlined in a separate memo, and illustrated
in class sessions covering a variety of different global industries, including:
apparel, footwear, forests, autos, computers, hard-disk drives, international
banking, and tourism. Cash prizes will be given to the student groups that
create the top two Industry Websites, as determined by class evaluation.
The first place award will be $1,000 and the second place award will
be $500, to be split equally among the students in each group.
The
following books will be read for the course.
They are available in the Duke University Bookstore.
Charles H. Fine.
Clockspeed: Winning Industry
Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage.
Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998.
Ira Magaziner and Mark Patinkin. The
Silent War: Inside the Global Business Battles Shaping America's Future. New York: Random House, 1989.
The articles we will read for the course are all available through E-Reserves at Perkins Library: http://www.lib.duke.edu/access/reserves/
Jan. 13 Introduction to the course
Inside Global Business: What Does It Take to Succeed?
Jan. 18 Magaziner & Patinkin, The Silent War, Introduction and chs.
1-2.
Jan. 20 Film: Robert Reich (host), "Made in America? -- Winners and
Losers."
Jan.
25 Magaziner & Patinkin, The Silent War, chs. 3-4.
Jan. 27 Global
Industry Websites (introduction to group projects).
Feb. 1 Magaziner & Patinkin, The Silent War, chs. 6, 9 and
Postscript.
| Feb. 3 | Selected articles from Foreign Affairs: Paul Krugman, “Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession” (March/April 1994); Alan Tonelson, “Beating Back Predatory Trade” (July/August 1994); Paul Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle” (Nov./Dec. 1994); and Stephen Radelet and Jeffrey Sachs, “Asia’s Reemergence” (Nov./Dec. 1997). |
| Feb. 8 |
Michael
Porter, “The Competitive Advantage of Nations,” Harvard
Business Review (March-April 1990): 73-93.
Michael E. Porter, “Clusters and Competition: New Agendas for Companies, Governments, and Institutions.” Pp. 197-287 in Michael E. Porter, On Competition (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998). |
| Global
Supply Chains and Industry Clockspeeds |
|
| Feb. 10 | Fine,
Clockspeed, chs. 1-3; Gary Gereffi, “A Commodity Chains Framework
for Analyzing Global Industries,” American
Behavioral Science, forthcoming. |
| Feb. 15 | Fine, Clockspeed, chs. 4-5. |
| Global Industry Websites (group outline due). | |
| Feb. 17 | Fine, Clockspeed,
chs. 6-8. Applying clockspeed analysis: examples. |
| Apparel, Footwear, and Global Sweatshops |
|
| Feb. 22 |
Regional comparisons of global sourcing in apparel Richard P. Appelbaum and Gary Gereffi, “Power and Profits in the Apparel Commodity Chain,” in Edna Bonanich et al., Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1994); Gary Gereffi, “Global Shifts, Regional Response: Can North America Meet the Full-Package Challenge?” Bobbin 39, 3 (Nov. 1998), pp. 16-31; and Gary Gereffi and Jennifer Bair, “U.S. Companies Eye NAFTA’s Prize,” Bobbin 39, 7 (March, 1998), pp. 26-35. |
| Feb. 24 |
Nike and global sweatshops Internet reports on Nike’s international subcontracting activities (these
will be forwarded to class members by instructor). For Nike’s defense of its global business practices, including disclosure information on the factories used to make Nike products with the Duke logo, see the company’s website: http://www.nikebiz.com/labor/index.shtml |
| Feb. 29 |
Guest speakers: Jon Rosenblum, Institute for Legal Studies, School of Law, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Duke/UNC representatives from Students Against Sweatshops. Richard Appelbaum and Peter Dreier, “The Campus Anti-Sweatshop Movement,” The American Prospect (September-October 1999), pp. 71-78. Jeff Manning, “Students, Nike
fighting war against sweatshops,” The
Oregonian, March 7, 1999. |
| The Environmental Certification of Forests | |
| March 2 | Guest
speaker: Michael Conroy, Ph.D., Ford Foundation, New
York Can we keep industry from global bottom-fishing? The case for independent social and environmental certification." |
| March 7 | Environmental
certification: pros and cons; Home Depot case. Recommended: Michael E. Porter, “Toward a new conception of the environment-competitiveness relationship,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, 4 (Fall 1995): 97-118. |
| March 9 | Mid-Term exam. |
| SPRING RECESS (March 14, 16) | |
| March 21 | International competitiveness in Eastern Europe
- some current issues. (Damon Coletta - Czech Republic; Martha Martinez - Romania; and Renan Levine - Poland) |
| March 23 | Review session (Global Industry Websites and Research Papers) |
| Computer Industry (cases of Intel, IBM, Dell, Acer, and Cisco Systems) | |
| March 28 |
James Curry, "Vertical Control in Horizontally Organized Industries:
The Case of PC Mainboard Production," Dec. 1999, ms. 30 pp. |
| Hard Disk Drives | |
| March 30 |
What is a hard disk drive? Where are the drives made? How has the location changed over time? David McKendrick, “Hard Disk
Drives.” Pp. 287-328 in David
C. Mowery (ed.), U.S. Industry
in 2000: Studies in Competitive Performance (Washington, DC: National
Academy Press, 1999). |
| April 4 |
How do we explain why the industry has gone overseas? What are the current competitive challenges for the U.S. firms in this industry? Guest speaker: Rick Doner, Political Science Department, Emory University. Recommended: Peter Gourevitch, Roger Bohn and David McKendrick, "Globalization of Production: Insights from the Hard Disk Drive Industry," World Development 28, 2 (2000): 301-317. |
| Information Services in "The New Economy" | |
| April 6 | Damon
Coletta (information services industry). |
| Global Industry Websites: completion date. | |
| April 11 | |
| Comparing the Four Best Global Industry Websites | |
| April 13 | In-class presentation of two Global Industry Websites. |
| April 18 | In-class presentation of two Global Industry Websites. |
| April 20 | Lessons learned from the Global Industry Websites. |
| April 25 |
Summing Up; results of voting (1st and 2nd place Global Industry Websites) Final Paper: Due. |