Elsevier

Journal of International Management

Supplier Strategies and Routines for Capability Development: Implications for Upgrading

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Abstract

This paper examines the strategies and routines adopted past pocket-size and medium-sized suppliers to develop capabilities that enable them to engage in upgrading, despite a precarious relational and institutional context. To this end, we investigate the strategic behaviour of ii Bangladeshi garment manufacturers. Both started out every bit pocket-sized suppliers for multinational enterprises (MNEs) and take somewhen grown into micro-multinationals. The firms are involved in 'tacit promissory contracting' with their buyers, a specific form of international outsourcing relationship. The study adopts a multiple case study design that involves interviews with managers/owners of the firms. The analysis yields 2 cardinal findings. Both firms accept devised strategies and taken coherent routines involving actions to develop skills and motivation needed to perform appropriate functional activities (i.e. pre-production, production and mail service-product) equally they embarked on different stages of upgrading. Furthermore, firms have designed routines to internalise the challenges originating from their relationships with their buyers and the institutional environment at the time that had the potential to bear on their upgrading goals. The paper contributes to IB studies past highlighting how suppliers, even in a precarious context, tin can control their own strategies and routines, and so as to develop capabilities that permit them to gradually redress the ability imbalance between themselves and their buyers.

Keywords

Capabilities

Upgrading

Routines

Global value chains (GVCs)

Bangladesh

Traditional emerging markets

Absorptive chapters

Cited by (0)

Noemi Sinkovics (PhD, The Academy of Manchester) is Lecturer (Banana Professor) in International Business and Management at Alliance Manchester Business School, U.Thousand and Visiting Scholar at Fox School of Business organization, Temple Academy. Her research focuses on International Entrepreneurship, ICT, and Economic Development bug. She has published in journals such as International Business organisation Review, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Inquiry, Critical Perspectives on International Business, and European Periodical of International Management. Email: [email protected]

Samia Ferdous Hoque (PhD, The University of Manchester) is Research Acquaintance in Responsible and International Business organisation and at Brotherhood Manchester Business Schoolhouse, U.K. She obtained an MBA from University of Bradford, Great britain. Her work is at the interface of development literatures and IB, within the specific context of the Bangladesh garment sectors. She has published in Critical Perspectives on International Business, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, and European Periodical of International Management. Email: [email protected]

Rudolf R. Sinkovics (PhD, WU Vienna), is Professor of International Business at The University of Manchester, UK, Visiting Professor at Lappeenranta Academy of Technology, Republic of finland and Visiting Scholar at Fox School of Business, Temple University. He has published on inter-organizational governance, the role of ICT in firm internationalization, and currently works on ascension powers, and responsible business. Email: [electronic mail protected]

© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.