GLOBAL PRODUCTION NETWORK

Synonymes ou variantes : GLOBAL PRODUCTION SYSTEM
GPN
TRANSNATIONAL PRODUCTION NETWORK
Équivalents : RED DE PRODUCCIÓN MUNDIAL
RÉSEAU DE PRODUCTION MONDIAL
Domaine : Production organization
Transnational corporation

Définition

The intra-firm and inter-firm transactions and forms of coordination on a global scale that link a company's own subsidiaries, affiliates and joint ventures with its subcontractors, suppliers, service providers and partners in strategic alliances.

Contexte

"Some 65,000 multinational enterprises, with around 850,000 foreign affiliates, are the key actors behind these global production systems. They coordinate global supply chains which link firms across countries."
(World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, ILO, 2004, p. 33)

Description

Through global production networks, transnational companies develop a transnational organization of production and distribution within and among firms instead of through markets. Global production networks are now evident across most manufacturing sectors and various service industries are also becoming organized in a similar international form.
(adapted from Jones, A., Dictionary of Globalization, Cambridge: Polity, 2006, p.105)

The essentially linear structures of production chains are enmeshed in the broader production networks of inter-firm relationships. Dicken identifies three dimensions of production networks: governance (how they are coordinated and regulated); spatiality (how they are configured geographically) and territorial embeddedness (the extent to which they are connected into particular bounded political, institutional and social settings).

Governance

Transnational corporations (TNCs) play a key role in coordinating production networks. TNCs not only own internationally based assets, but are also typically involved in a spiderweb of collaborative relationships with other legally independent firms across the globe.

Within the production network, each function may be performed by a different firm. In this case, the link consists of a series of externalized transactions, organized through the market. However, the whole network may also be operationalized within a single firm as a vertically integrated system.

The boundary between internalization and externalization is continually shifting as firms make decisions about which functions to perform in-house and which to outsource to other firms.

Dicken uses Gereffi's typology to distinguish between two types of production networks: Spatiality

According to Dicken, every production network has spatiality – the particular geographical configuration and extent of its component elements and the links between them.

This configuration can take place on a local, national, regional or, as is increasingly the case, global scale. A widely accepted view is that the geographical extensiveness of virtually all production networks has increased – in other words, we are witnessing the emergence of global production networks. Global and regional production networks not only integrate firms into structures that blur traditional organizational boundaries but also integrate national and local economies in ways which have enormous implications for their economic development and well-being.

Territorial Embeddedness

Production networks do not just float freely in a spaceless/placeless world. Every component in the production network – every firm, every economic function – is, quite literally, ‘grounded' in specific locations. All production networks have to operate within multi-scalar regulatory systems. They are, therefore, subject to a multiplicity of geographically differentiated political, social and cultural influences.

Connecting the Global Production Network: Relationships between Customers and Suppliers

In procuring inputs of materials, intermediate products and services for its operations, a firm has three choices: In practice, companies blend in-house supply, market transactions, and embedded relations grounded in networks. Dicken distinguishes three types of inter-firm relationships: subcontracting relationships, strategic alliances, flexible business relationships.

Subcontracting Relationships

Possibly between 50 and 70 per cent of manufacturing costs are spent on purchased inputs and this proportion appears to be increasing. The general trend is for a greater proportion of inputs to be outsourced to supplier firms. Some of these purchases will be "off-the-shelf" sourcing from independent suppliers. However, an increasingly significant proportion of such purchases are made on the basis of longer-term relationships whereby a customer firm subcontracts certain tasks to independent firms.

Firms that rely on a network of suppliers, who outsource many of their tasks, are sometimes called network-firms.

One undoubted development is the tendency for many firms to move towards closer functional relationships with their suppliers. There is a strong move towards the nomination of preferred suppliers with whom very close relationships are developed. Such suppliers are increasingly being given greater responsibility for the quality of their outputs and, indeed, are playing a more direct role in the design of products. The result, in many cases, is the development of a system of tiered suppliers. In tiered production, the buying company deals primarily with the top-tier suppliers, while lower-tier suppliers are managed by those above them in the pyramid. A tiered production system reduces the need for a single company to manage the entire supply chain.

Strategic Alliances

The development of preferred supplier relationships is parallel to one of the most significant developments in the global economy in recent years: the growth and spread of strategic alliances between firms on an international scale. These alliances, such as joint ventures, have become central to the global strategies of many firms. Most strikingly, the overwhelming majority of strategic alliances are between competitors. Many companies are forming not just single alliances but networks of alliances, in which relationships are multilateral. They create new constellations of economic power, through collective competition.

Strategic alliances are formal agreements between firms to pursue a specific objective. They involve the sharing of risks, rewards, and decision-making. Alliances are not the same as mergers, in which the identities of the merging companies are completely subsumed.

Flexible Business Networks

Dicken suggests that, parallel to subcontracting relationships and strategic alliances, a new organizational form is emerging, the flexible business network, in which all functions in the production chain are contracted to independent firms, but in which the final product is marketed under the lead company's brand name (Nike). The participants are all separate firms with no common ownership.
(Dicken, P., Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century, 4th ed., New York: Guilford Press, 2003, pp. 16-21; pp. 252-262)

Relations sémantiques

Hiérarchiques

Buyer-driven production network
Producer-driven production network
GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN
GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN
MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE
NETWORK-FIRM
Supply chain

Associatives

PRODUCTION MODULARITY
Transnational production
GLOBAL SOURCING
INSOURCING (En)
OFFSHORING (En)
ONSHORING (En)
OUTSOURCING (En)
TRIANGLE MANUFACTURING
© Jeanne Dancette