1.2.6 Defining global markets Global markets for manufactured goods, as opposed to, say, primary commodities such as oil and timber, arose largely in the second half of the twentieth century as trade between countries intensified. The lowering of transport costs and the relative fall in trade barriers enabled firms in one country to compete with a domestic rival in another. The supply of manufactured goods across the globe as a result of worldwide demand, principally from the affluent economies, thus heightened competitio
1.2.5 Offshore fragments of industry: a pro-market standpoint From a pro-market standpoint, global market forces and the competitive pressures that they generate leave businesses with no choice but to take advantage of lower labour costs elsewhere. In the textile business or the toy business, lower wage costs are the key to profitability; if your competitors find a cheaper labour source, you either follow their example or go out of business. It is not, so the argument runs, because managers lack integrity or compassion that there are now more manufactur
1.2.3 Activity 2 Before you read on, I would like you to dwell for just a moment on the significance of this shift from direct investment by Western firms to the establishment of subcontracting ties with overseas partners. Aside from outside firms being able to pass on to the subcontractor t 1.2.2 Offshore fragments of industry The rise of global factories in the 1970s owed much to the rapid improvement in transport and communications technologies which took place at that time and which made it possible to keep in touch with, and control, production processes in different parts of the world. Just as significant was the fragmentation of industrial production whereby parts of the manufacturing process could be relocated over vast distances. Sewing in garment and footwear production, for instance, was among the 1.2.1 Introduction Looking back over the 1970s, it is perhaps hard now to appreciate just how dramatic were the changes to the global map of industry taking place at that time. As more and more of the world's industry shifted from the affluent nations to the poorer, less developed countries in search of a cheaper labour force, the global economic map had to be redrawn to take account of the borders crossed and the distances traversed by firms from wealthier countries seeking to generate higher profits by reloca 1.1.3 Introduction continued The difficulty perhaps is that things which happen at some distance from the everyday routine of our lives are often hard to place or connect with. Moreover, it has to be said that not everyone views factory sweatshops in quite the same way as groups such as Oxfam, or indeed endorses their negative claims about the use of cheap labour in places such as East Asia. For that is what the statements of such groups are: claims. And they are far from uncontroversial. In fact, it is poss 1.1.1
Introduction Many of the smaller branded goods on sale to consumers in Europe and North America – the latest in clothing and footwear or the smart toys and electronic gadgets on offer – are made in factory ‘sweatshops’. Found in the backstreets of modern, Western cities, but more often than not a feature of the poorer parts of the world, factory sweatshops are an integral part of today's global economy. Increasingly, as you can see from Author(s): Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence The material acknowledged below is contained in: Ordering the International: History, Change and Transformation (eds William B References Supporting Collaboration and Harnessing of OER Within the Policy Framework of KNUST Supporting Collaboration and Harnessing of OER Within the Policy Framework of KNUST: Report Prepared by OER Africa on Behalf of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). As part of a broader process of stimulating collabo Guide to gaining ethical consent from patients for content released as OER OER Africa has developed a guide for OER creators to obtain consent from patients who participate in an OER project. The guide covers general ethical principles to consider as well the importance of obtaining consent in line with the cultural Fostering Cross-institutional Collaboration for Open Educational Resources Production Multicultural Education for Faculty: Scenes from the Movie "Crash" What Patients Bring to the Medical Encounter: Dealing with the Whole Patient Hanau Articulator Training Cases in Clinical Microbiology SI 655 - Management of Electronic Records iTunes U Channel Embryology Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this book.
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