The Routledge Companion to Global Value Chains Reinterpreting and Reimagining Megatrends in the World Economy

Megatrends are deep-set trajectories of change that will reshape the landscape over the next few decades. Megatrends herald both challenges and opportunities. With the ever growing interest among business leaders and academics into global value chains or GVCs, this reference work fills in the gap in existing literature by portraying the current state of play of GVCs and offering an analysis of the megatrends in 3-D printing, smart specialisation, emerging technology enabled services, data analytics targeted at micro multinationals, start-up entrepreneurs, public sector and middle markets. The first sections are essentially intradisciplinary in character, seeking to explore historical aspects of GVCs. The sections cover the discipline of operations and supply chain management, the history of emerging supply chain technologies, impact of interfirm collaboration and theory and practice across sectors, technologies and economies. The final section assumes a more interdisciplinary approach and examines various topics by industry sector where operations and supply chain interfaces with the economy, society, culture, and politics. This comprehensive handbook provides a timely analysis of leading edge global practices in one volume.