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Matthew Alford
Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
Dr. Matthew AIford is a Senior Lecturer at the Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. His research interrogates questions of development in the context of globalization, transnational trading networks and labour. More specifically, he focuses on the role of nation states in governing labour, and how public regulations interact with lead-firm driven private codes of conduct and civil society initiatives across geographical scales. Another strand of his research explores labour agency, and the evolving strategies adopted by workers in contesting their conditions in global production networks (GPNs).
MORE ABOUT MATTHEW ALFORD >Mar 3, 2023
Elizabeth Yi Wang, Nigel Driffield, Jeremy Clegg, Lilian Miles, Matthew Alford & Jae Kim
What does it take to build an inclusive governance of global value chains? A framework for intervention
As important actors in global value chains (GVCs), multinational enterprises exercise coordination and control over worldwide commodity, production, service, workforce and knowledge mobility. A level playing field for all GVC stakeholders remains absent. We argue for empowering subordinated stakehol...
Feb 15, 2023
Matthew Alford & Margareet Visser
Governance and Power across Intersecting Value Chains: The Case of South African Apples
A prevailing focus of global value chain (GVC) analysis has been on the dominance of highly consolidated Northern retailers over suppliers in the global South. The rise of regional and domestic value chains (RVCs/DVCs) within the Global South which intersect with GVCs, has been found to involve priv...
Nov 24, 2021
Valentina De Marchi, Matthew Alford
State policies and upgrading in global value chains: A systematic literature review
This paper examines the role of state policymaking in a context of global value chains (GVCs). While the literature acknowledges that states matter in GVCs, there is little understanding of how they matter from a policy perspective. We address this tension between theory and practice by first deline...
Aug 5, 2021
Matthew Alford, Margareet Visser, Stephanie Barrientos
Southern actors and the governance of labour standards in global production networks: The case of South African fruit and wine
Recent studies highlight the emergence of standards, including multi-stakeholder initiatives developed and applied within the global South where supplier firms are usually based. This trend has created a complex ethical terrain whereby transnational standards flow through global production networks ...
Jun 21, 2021
Giovanni Pasquali, Aarti Krishnan, Matthew Alford
Multichain strategies and economic upgrading in global value chains: Evidence from Kenyan horticulture
An extensive body of research has examined the prospects for suppliers in the global South to upgrade within global value chains (GVCs) controlled by lead firms from, and oriented towards end-markets in, the global North. However, the expansion of South-South trade has altered the geography of GVCs....
Jun 2, 2021
Giovanni Pasquali, Matthew Alford
Global value chains, private governance and multiple end-markets: insights from Kenyan leather
This article analyses how the private governance of global value chains (GVCs) varies across multiple end-markets. This is explored through a two-stage mixed-methods analysis of Kenya’s participation in leather value chains serving Europe, China, India and the COMESA region. We first draw on trans...
