ABSTRACT

Contemporary industrialization is the result of an integrated system of global trade and production. Open international trade has encouraged nations to specialize in different branches of manufacturing and even in different stages of production within a specific industry. This process, fuelled by the explosion of new products and new technologies since the Second World War, has led to the emergence of a ‘global manufacturing system’ in which production capacity is dispersed to an unprecedented number of developing as well as industrialized countries. What is novel about today’s global manufacturing system is not the spread of economic activities across national boundaries per se, but rather the fact that international production and trade are globally organized by core corporations that represent both industrial and commercial capital.