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Petty commodities, serious business: the governance of fashion jewellery chains between China and Ghana
Author(s) -
HAUGEN HEIDI ØSTBØ
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
global networks
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.685
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1471-0374
pISSN - 1470-2266
DOI - 10.1111/glob.12164
Subject(s) - commodity , commerce , business , corporate governance , china , value (mathematics) , distribution (mathematics) , production (economics) , industrial organization , dependency (uml) , market economy , commodity market , economics , microeconomics , finance , mathematical analysis , mathematics , systems engineering , machine learning , political science , computer science , law , engineering
In many parts of the world, people access consumer goods mainly via informal economic networks. In this article, I analyse the governance of petty commodity chains through a case study of Chinese fashion jewellery produced for the Ghanaian market. ‘Petty commodity chains’ denotes a particular type of global value chain, where production, trade, and distribution are carried out by small, unregistered businesses, between which personalized relationships and informal infrastructure enable transactions. These chains are neither controlled by lead firms at the production or distribution ends, nor made up of pure market linkages. Weak formal institutions and an intensely competitive commercial environment encourage business actors to establish enduring relationships. Credit relations run through long stretches of the chain and create mutual dependencies. The concept of ‘beholden value chains’ is introduced to describe the co‐dependency between business actors and the coordination of activities in petty commodity chains.