Data di Pubblicazione:
2019
Citazione:
The variety of port labour systems in light of the Global Value Chains / A. Bottalico. ((Intervento presentato al convegno SASE Conference - Society for the Advancement of Socio Economics, Research Network: Global Value Chains tenutosi a New York City nel 2019.
Abstract:
In the last decades, the European ports have experienced a paradigm shift. In broader terms, this change occurred in parallel with a new measurement of distance no longer considered through kilometrical units. Time, in the meanwhile, becomes the new parameter to measure space. Bonacich and Wilson (2008) coined this paradigm shift as “logistics revolution”. Ideally, there should be no point, from production to final sale, when goods sit around waiting for further processing. The flow from sale to ordering to production to shipping and to the next sale should occur in one smooth motion (Bonacich and Wilson, 2008: 15). Circulation has become a part of the production process itself, whereas competition shifted from the firm level to the supply chain level (Allen, 1997; Bonacich and Wilson, 2008).
Port industry started to witness a significant transition during the 1990s, when ports developed in ‘elements in the value-driven chain system’, nodes within the supply chains and global production networks (Robinson, 2002). Many scholars have shared the idea that the technological revolution of the transportation has taken the shape and size shown in recent years, when it provided an essential support for the economic globalization (Bologna, 2010; Levinson, 2006, Veltz, 1997). Kumar and Hoffmann (2010) observe that the declining cost of the international transport is one of the four cornerstones of the globalized economy (together with telecommunications, trade liberalization and international standardization).
In this process, port industry has played a crucial role. If the container embodies the constitutive revolution of the maritime-logistics chain (Meersman et al., 2009), the reasons primarily concern the role of the intermodal transport as a glue between the various nodes of the production networks within which a transnational firm is broken down.
By looking at the port industry, this paper argues that the economic strategies of the market players across the maritime-logistics sector are affecting the institutional contexts in which they operate. In order to do so, the study explores throughout a comparative perspective the changing labour dynamics in the port industry – the pivotal link of the maritime-logistics sector – by bridging the theoretical perspectives of the Global Value Chains/ Global Production Networks (GVCs/GPNs) and the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC). The global nature of the port industry, indeed, highlights the mutual interaction between global networks and national institutions, demonstrating how the economic sectors influence the socio-institutional contexts at national level (Lane, 2008).
A multiplicity of overlapping elements affects currently the port industry: regulatory and competitive aspects are jointly important in this economic sector, as well as the functional location of a port along the maritime-logistics chain and the spatial location of a port at local, regional and global level. Likewise, the following factors, in particular, influence port industry:
1. Local juridical factors (e.g. national legislations and ongoing reform processes);
2. Supranational juridical factors (e.g. regulations from the European Union, compatibility among
supranational and national rules, jurisdictions, Social Dialogue, etc.);
3. Institutional factors (e.g. port governance, port labour regulations, industrial relations);
4. Economic factors (e.g. market strategies of the global players, in particular the shipping companies, which are lead firms in the maritime logistics chain);
5. Social factors (e.g. employment conditions, levels and stability of employment, conflicts, training, quality of the port labour system).
This paper presents a comparative analysis of the changing labour dynamics in the por
Tipologia IRIS:
14 - Intervento a convegno non pubblicato
Elenco autori:
A. Bottalico
Link alla scheda completa: