Over the last 20+ years, multinational corporations have been confronted with accusations of abuse of market power and unfair and unethical business conduct especially as it relates to their overseas operations and supply chain management. These accusations include, among others, worker exploitation in terms of unfairly low wages, excessive work hours, and unsafe work environment; pollution and contamination of air, ground water and land resources; and, undermining the ability of natural government to protect the well-being of their citizens. MNCs have (...) responded to these accusations by creating voluntary codes of conduct which commit them to specific standards for addressing these issues. These codes are created at both the industry-wide and the individual company level. Unfortunately, these codes have generated little credibility and public trust because their compliance claims cannot be independently verified, and they lack transparency and full public disclosure. In this article, we present a case study of the voluntary code of conduct by Mattel, Inc., the world’s largest toy company. The code, called the Global Manufacturing Principles, confronts the general criticism leveled against voluntary codes of conduct by creating detailed standards of compliance, independent external monitoring of the company’s compliance with its code of conduct, and making full, and uncensored public disclosure of the audit findings and company’s response in terms of remedial action. We present a detailed account of how Mattel’s voluntary code of conduct was created, implemented, and ultimately abandoned over 9 years. We provide an evaluative analysis of the company’s GMP compliance throughout its life span, which suggests a bell-shaped curve, where early top management commitments were met with pockets of resistance from operational groups, who were concerned about balancing GMP compliance efforts with traditional performance criteria. The early stage response from Mattel’s top management was quick and supported with the requisite resources. As a result, the compliance process accelerated, becoming increasingly more robust and effective. The success of code compliance and increased transparency in public disclosure energized field managers with a sense of professional satisfaction and publicly recognized accomplishments. The decline in GMP compliance was equally steep. When all the easily attainable targets had been reached at the company-operated plants, addressing vendor plants’ compliance presented a new set of challenges, which taxed corporate resources and management commitment. It would seem that value-based and ethics-oriented considerations, i.e., doing the right thing for the right reason, were no longer the driving force for Mattel’s management. Mattel did not see any economic benefit from its proactive stance, when competitors did not seem to suffer adverse consequences for not following suit. The final contributing factor to the code’s abandonment was a widely publicized series of product recalls which absorbed top management’s attention. (shrink)

Over the last 20+ years, multinational corporations (MNCs) have been confronted with accusations of abuse of market power and unfair and unethical business conduct especially as it relates to their overseas operations and supply chain management. These accusations include, among others, worker exploitation in terms of unfairly low wages, excessive work hours, and unsafe work environment; pollution and contamination of air, ground water and land resources; and, undermining the ability of natural government to protect the well-being of their citizens. MNCs (...) have responded to these accusations by creating voluntary codes of conduct which commit them to specific standards for addressing these issues. These codes are created at both the industry-wide and the individual company level. Unfortunately, these codes have generated little credibility and public trust because their compliance claims cannot be independently verified, and they lack transparency and full public disclosure. In this article, we present a case study of the voluntary code of conduct by Mattel, Inc., the world's largest toy company. The code, called the Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP), confronts the general criticism leveled against voluntary codes of conduct by (a) creating detailed standards of compliance, (b) independent external monitoring of the company's compliance with its code of conduct, and (c) making full, and uncensored public disclosure of the audit findings and company's response in terms of remedial action. We present a detailed account of how Mattel's voluntary code of conduct was created, implemented, and ultimately abandoned over 9 years. We provide an evaluative analysis of the company's GMP compliance throughout its life span, which suggests a bellshaped curve, where early top management commitments were met with pockets of resistance from operational groups, who were concerned about balancing GMP compliance efforts with traditional performance criteria. The early stage response from Mattel's top management was quick and supported with the requisite resources. As a result, the compliance process accelerated, becoming increasingly more robust and effective. The success of code compliance and increased transparency in public disclosure energized field managers with a sense of professional satisfaction and publicly recognized accomplishments.The decline in GMP compliance was equally steep. When all the easily attainable targets had been reached at the company-operated plants, addressing vendor plants' compliance presented a new set of challenges, which taxed corporate resources and management commitment. It would seem that value-based and ethicsoriented considerations, i. e., doing the right thing for the right reason, were no longer the driving force for Mattel's management. Mattel did not see any economic benefit from its proactive stance, when competitors did not seem to suffer adverse consequences for not following suit. The final contributing factor to the code's abandonment was a widely publicized series of product recalls which absorbed top management's attention. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to analyse and provide solutions to the problems encountered during the engineering processes undertaken by global companies established in Mexico. The considerations for this study are not only centred on the engineering work but also on its relation to the culture and the people within which this process takes place. One automobile consortium with a huge assembly plant in Mexico is researched, and a case study is developed for its engineering change process. The (...) time delays in carrying out an engineering change are analysed. Important findings are reported in the areas of software operation, design process, engineers training, teamwork, adaptation to different cultures, technology transfer and language barriers. Concurrent engineering is proposed as a means to gain the time reduction sought by the plant in Mexico. Special attention is recommended for the education of personnel and their preparation for an important organisational change. (shrink)

_Education in the Global City_ examines education in Singapore through the critical lens of ‘manufacturing’. The book brings together two disparate fields which inform each other, education and the ‘global city’; and the book’s contributors analyse and critique the manufacturing of Singapore education and Singapore’s global city formation. The collection covers vocational education, language policies, Higher Education, English education, critical thinking, sex education, creativity, and critical feminist scholarship. Collectively, the book pries open the ideology of (...) the manufacturing education system, and points out the tension between the nation and its ideologies, and the ‘global city’ aspirations. It also asks how education contributes to, and is shaped by, the market realities of Singapore’s global city ambitions – which are at odds with the nationalistic local agenda and priorities of nation-building. In interrupting and speaking against the prevailing manufacturing of education for a teleological end, in spite of Singapore’s successful nation-building, this book is an important contribution to critical education scholarship.This book was originally published as a special issue of _Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. _. (shrink)

India is a major producer and exporter of hand-knotted carpets to the world since the beginning of the British rule over India. Majority of the hand-knotted carpets exported from India are produced in the Bhadohi-Mirzapur region, popularly called as the carpet belt of India. Given deplorable working conditions and very high prevalence of child labour in the cluster, in the mid-1990, four social labels were implemented to improve the labour standards, in addition to slew of labour laws implemented by the (...) state of India. The objective of this study is to explore the prevailing labour standards and effectiveness of social labels in improving labour standards in the hand-knotted carpet manufacturing cluster. This study found that even after the implementation of social labels and slew of labour laws, there had been barely any improvement in the working conditions of carpet workers. The workers continued to be adversely incorporated in the carpet commodity chain. However, realising that there is very little scope of social upgrading in this occupation, many carpet workers have shifted to other occupations. But this study found very few child workers in carpet manufactories in the cluster. (shrink)

Although continued investments in nanotechnology are made, atomically precise manufacturing (APM) to date is still regarded as speculative technology. APM, also known as molecular manufacturing, is a token example of a converging technology, has great potential to impact and be affected by other emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and ICT. The development of APM thus can have drastic global impacts depending on how it is designed and used. This paper argues that the ethical issues that (...) arise from APM - as both a standalone technology or as a converging one - affects the roles of stakeholders in such a way as to warrant an alternate means furthering responsible innovation in APM research. This paper introduces a value-based design methodology called Value Sensitive Design (VSD) that may serve as a suitable framework to adequately cater to the values of stakeholders. Ultimately, it is concluded that VSD is a strong candidate framework for addressing the moral concerns of stakeholders during the preliminary stages of technological development. (shrink)

The study of matching degree between energy equipment manufacturing and market demand is crucial for energy enterprises to adjust business strategies, expand market share, and develop sustainably. Considering that the current electricity market evaluation indicators are rarely selected from a global perspective and a single evaluation method may lead to one-sided results, this article takes the technology and equipment related to electric energy as the research object and selects six indicators, including technical standards, qualification certification, export methods, after-sales (...) service, market concentration, and product concentration. By analyzing the supply and demand characteristics of major global regional markets and the situation of Chinese power enterprises in these markets, we propose matching model cluster including osculating value method, rank-sum ratio method, ideal point method, entropy value method, and efficacy coefficient method to conduct the matching degree study. The results show that the overall market matching degree of Chinese power companies is good, especially in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa. For markets with a low degree of matching, we analyze the reasons based on the matching indicators values to provide companies with corresponding strategies and recommendations. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyse cultural influences when French companies cooperate with Mexican companies (subsidiaries of the French, established in Mexico) in the field of automotive manufacturing. An OEM supplier and a final assembly plant were selected to perform the study. Interviews with the workers, supervisors and managers have been performed. Case studies were collected in order to analyse the problems and to illustrate technical as well as cultural solutions. The analysis showed that important differences and (...) coincidences in the manufacturing solutions could be explained from the cultural (French and Mexican) standpoint. The conclusions integrate some recommendations for French and Mexican companies that are in actual cooperation or that are planning to globalise in the corresponding countries. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By “dissent,” we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry’s funding of studies that (...) questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by ’manufacturing doubt’. Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses an increasing threat to patient care and population health and there is a growing need for novel therapies to tackle AMR. Bacteriophage (phage) therapy is a re-emerging antimicrobial strategy with the potential to transform how bacterial infections are treated in patients and populations. Currently, in the UK, phages can be used as unlicensed medicinal products on a ‘named-patient’ basis. We make an ethical case for why it is crucially important for the UK to invest in Good (...) Manufacturing Practice (GMP) for both ongoing unlicensed and future licensed phage therapy. Access to phages produced to GMP (GMP phages) will ensure effective patient care and better outcomes as well as health systems benefits. The UK also has the potential to become a global leader in the timely and cost-efficient manufacturing and supply of a therapy that meets internationally recognised standards. (shrink)

We present a distributed control modeling approach for an automated manufacturing system based on the dynamics of one-dimensional cellular automata. This is inspired by the fact that both cellular automata and manufacturing systems are discrete dynamical systems where local interactions given among their elements can lead to complex dynamics, despite the simple rules governing such interactions. The cellular automaton model developed in this study focuses on two states of the resources of a manufacturing system, namely, busy or (...) idle. However, the interaction among the resources such as whether they are shared at different stages of the manufacturing process determines the global dynamics of the system. A procedure is shown to obtain the local evolution rule of the automaton based on the relationships among the resources and the material flow through the manufacturing process. The resulting distributed control of the manufacturing system appears to be heterarchical, and the evolution of the cellular automaton exhibits a Class II behavior for some given disordered initial conditions. (shrink)

Rising global food prices have driven 44 million additional people into extreme poverty—and malnutrition—in developing countries since June 2010. Partners in Food Solutions , a nonprofit social enterprise affiliated with General Mills, is proposed as the conduit for food industry managers, engineers, and scientists to initially advise small‐ and medium‐sized African mills and food processors—and later other developing countries—on improving supply chain management by addressing manufacturing problems, developing products, improving packaging, extending product shelf, and finding new product markets. (...) In this article, the “creative capitalism” model of sustainability and social and environmental responsibility is applied to the food manufacturing industry's efforts supporting PFS. Furthermore, the evolution of the sustainable business model developed by PFS is thoroughly described, explained, and analyzed as a generic model of social enterprise to be “scaled up” by the global food manufacturing industry. A summary of salient points conclude the article. (shrink)

In the late 1980s workforce became more diverse in terms of demographic changes, cultural differences and other characteristics of organizational members. This diversity was a reflection of changing global markets. Workforce diversity has both positive and negative effects on organizational performance. Therefore, it is becoming important especially for medium- and large-scale businesses. In order to manage increasingly workforce diversity and to prevent discrimination, diversity management is now considered as a major part of strategic human resource management. The purpose of (...) this study is to establish the dimensions of discrimination that occur due to demographic differences in Turkish manufacturing industry. The findings of the research indicate that demographic characteristics, socio-cultural structure, managerial policy and behaviors, union tendency and regional differences, laws and local community, gender, educational and age differences, and political opinions have influence on discrimination. According to the results, discrimination has been observed mostly in job processes such as promotions and appointments, human resource selection, job/employment examination and interviews, and performance appraisal. (shrink)

The continued advance of global value chains as the mode of production for an increasing number of goods and services has impacted considerably on the economies and societies both of the developed world and the emerging economies. Although there have been many efforts at reform there is evidence of unresolved dilemmas of human rights, environmental issues and ethical dilemmas in the operation of the global value chain. This paper focuses on the role and performance of Apple Inc in (...) the global value chain in Asia. Apple is the most successful corporation on earth measured in financial terms and yet has failed to find a solution to recurrent employment and environmental problems occurring in plants manufacturing Apple components. This analysis informs the current theoretical debate on the development of the global value chain and the continuing institutional failure that leaves employees vulnerable and the environment neglected. (shrink)

This chapter critically explores the extent to which pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to assist poor patients in least developed countries who currently have no or inadequate access to lifesaving medications. Focusing on the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic in LDCs, the first section of this essay begins with some background information of the disproportionate burden of HIV/AIDS in LDCs. The second section provides a brief overview of some of the salient arguments for holding multinational antiretroviral treatment manufacturers as morally responsible (...) for easing the disproportionate global disease burden. The third section explains that these arguments regarding pharmaceutical companies’ duty to assist are going too far on the one hand by downplaying other non-pharmacological contributors to the slow response, but are also not going far enough on the other hand in upholding reciprocity-based duties. As the international community and researchers battle the reemergence of Ebola in Africa, the fourth section explores how lessons from the HIV/AIDS situation can help to address what pharmaceutical companies may subsequently owe patients in this region and how the international community should respond to ongoing unequal disease burden. (shrink)

Activities of product design and manufacturing are carried out on a worldwide scale. Operations like outsourcing and fabless manufacturing occur frequently in both design and manufacturing processes to stimulate outbreaks of the abovementioned phenomena. In this situation, manufacturing knowledge data, that have been collected and used only by the same enterprise in the same place and within the same ethnic group up to now, are not sufficient or precise enough for making a plan of ongoing (...) class='Hi'>manufacturing. This paper tries to suggest an example of manufacturing knowledge data containing an element of production culture and to estimate a risk of manufacturing trouble that could happen between each production culture. (shrink)

Nowadays the real threat has appeared: "thinking man" will disappear from the planet, and his place will be taken by "information consuming man." The rapidly evolving spiritually dependent consumer will turn into a completely controlled human being. A value orientation that we did not create will entirely determine all our choices and dominate our attention. Both the values and the products of mass culture are being spread among consumers as extensively as possible by mechanisms of culture manufacture, in accord with (...) the technological opportunities of the modern culture industry, connected in many ways with the mass media, and are being consumed on the same level as other products offered in the modern market. It becomes clear that the ecology of consciousness, along with the ecology of human life, is the most urgent and the most current problem of contemporary society.The main tasks of a global ecology of consciousness are to understand the conditional character of the external system of values and the radical reorientation that is appropriate to it; to create a culture of life as the realization of the original boundlessly disclosing free spirit, manifested in the encounter of man and world; and to return from captivity to imaginary things to life as dialogue with the world. First of all it is necessary to advance to a deep ecological understanding of the world—an understanding of nature, completed in the "noosphere," as the unique and perfect home of human consciousness. When a human being recognizes "the internal eco-crisis" and discovers the chaos and senselessness behind the imaginary clarity, he inevitably realizes the necessity for radical changes. His activity is initiated by the deepest satisfaction accompanying the expansion of the bounds of perception. We are speaking about the integral human being, personifying in himself both nature and civilization at the point of their intersection, removing the contradictions between the physical and the spiritual, between naturalness and technological progress. (shrink)

Workers in the garment manufacturing industry are often subjected to violations of their rights and are exposed to low wages and difficult working conditions. In response to the exposure of these violations in the media, major fashion brands and retailers subject their suppliers to labour codes of conduct. Despite these codes of conduct being largely ineffective, this comparative case study of garment manufacturers operating from Lesotho and Eswatini illustrates that such codes provide workers and trade unions with access to (...) bargaining leverage that they would otherwise not have. A framework with a synthesis of potential sources of workers’ power is developed and related to global production networks, collective mobilisation, the nature of the state, as well as national and transnational scales of organising. Based on historical case studies of the two countries, this paper illustrates how unions in the two countries followed different approaches to using this source of power in relation to other sources of power. These approaches were shaped by their contexts and strategic choices. Theoretically, it is argued that sources of workers’ power are analytically distinct, but are relational and operate best when seen as mutually reinforcing. The term ‘power resource nexus’ is used to frame this potential mutual reinforcement of sources of power. (shrink)

Accelerated COVID-19 vaccine development represents an important accomplishment and a milestone in the history of vaccine evolution. However, the vaccine’s scarcity made its equitable global allocation and distribution ambiguous. Despite the initial pledges from wealthy countries for fairness and inclusivity towards the poorer ones, the policies followed diverged significantly. Wealthy countries have vastly superior access to vaccines in a reality likened to an ethical disaster. This paper calls for the need for fair global vaccine allocation and distribution and (...) examines the barriers that were met along the way, originating from different points, such as the nationalistic approach on the matter that most wealthy countries have adopted or the inability of poor countries to purchase or manufacture vaccines. Further, a suggestion regarding the ethical principles and values that ought to guide global vaccine allocation and distribution is provided with a higher priority given to helping the worst-off, saving the most lives, protecting people in high risk, such as frontline healthcare professionals, and minimising social gaps, along with an ethical theoretical background for each prioritisation. It is not too late for wealthy countries to realise that vaccine inequity prolongs pandemics, so that they change their policies in favour of the global common good that will not only provide immediate universal benefits but will also serve as a guide for future pandemic crises. (shrink)

The declining role of the state in world economic affairs and the increasing reach of transnational corporations to various parts of the world pose a serious challenge to the effectiveness and success of international environmental treaties. With the further integration of the global economy and the rise of economic actors that operate and conduct their business without regard to national boundaries, cost-benefit analyses of economic development and environmental impact become problematic. For instance, are national states responsible for the pool (...) of carbon emissions within their borders or do the foreign owners of carbon-emitting infrastructure and production or the consumers of goods manufactured by transnational corporations in Third World countries hold a share of the responsibility for the emissions created? These and other related issues, such as the promotion of equity and justice, are the main themes of this article. (shrink)

Through the case of the Helix_T wind turbine project, this article sets out to argue two points: first, on a theoretical level, that Commons-based peer production, in conjunction with the emerging technological capabilities of three-dimensional printing, can also produce promising hardware, globally designed and locally produced. Second, the Commons-oriented wind turbine examined here is also meant to practically contribute to the quest for novel solutions to the timely problem of the need for renewable sources of energy, more in the sense (...) of a development process than as a ready-to-apply solution. We demonstrate that it is possible for someone with partial initial knowledge to initiate a similar, complex project based on an interesting idea, and to succeed in implementing it through collaboration with Commons-oriented communities, while using peer-produced products and tools. Given the trends and trajectories both of the current information-based paradigm and the problems of the predominant industrial modes of production with all the collateral damage they entail, this may be considered a positive message indeed. (shrink)

Medicine regulation demands the application of sound medical, scientific, and technical knowledge and skills, and operates within a legal framework. Regulatory functions involve interactions with various stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, traders, consumers, health professionals, researchers, and governments) whose economic, social, and political motives may differ, making implementation of regulation both politically and technically challenging. This book discusses regulatory landscape globally and the current global regulatory scenario of medicinal products and food products comprehensively.

Ethics is a significant issue among those in leadership positions, especially since the ethical corporate scandals of the 1970s followed by corporate scandals in the 1980s and the S&L scandals of the 1980s and 1990s and most recently the global financial crisis of 2006–2009. The purpose of this research was to measure the perceived leadership integrity in today’s manufacturing environment, since the global financial crisis, as perceived by their employees. This study included 7,233 manufacturing employees in (...) the United States. A total of 66 surveys were used to calculate data for this study. The Perceived Leader Integrity Scale (PLIS) was used to collect data from respondents that included demographic questions. The research addressed the following question: To what degree are leaders in the manufacturing industry considered “low ethical,” “moderate ethical,” and “high ethical” on the PLIS? (shrink)

Do we have moral duties to people in distant parts of the world? If so, how demanding are these duties? And how can they be reconciled with our obligations to fellow citizens? -/- Every year, millions of people die from poverty-related causes while countless others are forced to flee their homes to escape from war and oppression. At the same time, many of us live comfortably in safe and prosperous democracies. Yet our lives are bound up with those of the (...) poor and dispossessed in multiple ways: our clothes are manufactured in Asian sweatshops; the oil that fuels our cars is purchased from African and Middle Eastern dictators; and our consumer lifestyles generate environmental changes that threaten Bangladeshi peasants with drought and famine. These facts force us to re-evaluate our conduct and to ask whether we must do more for those who have less. -/- Helping students to grapple with big questions surrounding justice, human rights, and equality, this comprehensive yet accessible textbook features chapters on a variety of pressing issues such as Immigration, International Trade, War, and Climate Change. Suitable for undergraduate and graduate students alike, the book also serves as a philosophical primer for politicians, activists, and anyone else who cares about justice. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually (...) consistent. For instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

Respect for and promotion of the human rights of people with HIV/AIDS is now an entrenched component of the global response to HIV. However, as the global HIV epidemic has turned into a global AIDS epidemic, and as the death toll mounts, one area of human rights—the right to health care—has become fiercely contested. In particular, the degree to which patents on medicines impede what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has described as the “human (...) right” of access to essential medicines is receiving close scrutiny. The controversy generated by a recent article that argues, “in Africa patents and patent law are not a major barrier to treatment access in and of themselves,” is indicative of the intensity of the debate. (shrink)

Respect for and promotion of the human rights of people with HIV/AIDS is now an entrenched component of the global response to HIV. However, as the global HIV epidemic has turned into a global AIDS epidemic, and as the death toll mounts, one area of human rights—the right to health care—has become fiercely contested. In particular, the degree to which patents on medicines impede what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has described as the “human (...) right” of access to essential medicines is receiving close scrutiny. The controversy generated by a recent article that argues, “in Africa patents and patent law are not a major barrier to treatment access in and of themselves,” is indicative of the intensity of the debate. (shrink)

Our country’s equipment manufacturing industry ranks among the best in all developing countries, but compared with developed countries, there is still a long way to go. It is not only the backwardness of various technologies, but also the interference of other countries. Although our country's equipment manufacturing industry is not as advanced as the advanced technology of developed countries, we still have to stick to our original aspirations, do not underestimate ourselves, and be good at absorbing and learning (...) from the strengths of others to make up for our own weaknesses. While not working behind closed doors and while absorbing technology from other countries, we can make use of our strengths to make up for our weaknesses and develop our own industrial technology. This paper studies the evolution trend of innovation network structure and at the same time studies the evolution mechanism of advanced equipment manufacturing innovation network structure from the perspective of complex systems. The explained variable in this article is green total factor productivity. The variable adopts the Malmquist–Luenberger global super-efficiency index model. There are two main explanatory variables. One is the heterogeneity that affects the efficiency of industrial evolution, including factor heterogeneity, structural heterogeneity, and environmental heterogeneity, and the other is the interaction term of equipment manufacturing specialization agglomeration degree dummy variable multiplied by factor heterogeneity. The regional economic development level is added to the model as a control variable. In the selection of measurement indicators, the per capita GDP is used as the control variable. The experimental results show that each sample is tested in pairs, and the standard error level of the mean is 0.018, which is less than 0.05, indicating that the efficiency of the equipment manufacturing industry’s economic correlation spatial network has a significant impact on the overall economic development level of the industry. The reduction in spur helps to increase economic output. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between Puerto Rico's export-oriented development program and the demand for women workers in the manufacturing sector from 1952 to 1980. Its central proposition is that the consistently high proportion of women in the manufacturing sector was the result of an employment structure characterized by specialization in assembly-type activities and low wages. Although the Puerto Rican government pursued a development strategy designed to increase job opportunities for men, the manufacturing industries attracted to the (...) island by its export-oriented industrialization policies generated a strong demand for women workers. The apparent contradiction between the employment practices of manufacturing establishments and government policies is due to the restructuring of the global economy and the emergence of a new international division of labor that brought increasing numbers of women into the labor market. (shrink)

From the rising number of hackerspaces to an increase in hardware start-ups, maker culture is envisioned as an enabler of the next industrial revolution—a source of unhindered technological innovation, a revamp of broken economies and educational systems. Drawing from long-term ethnographic research, this article examines how China’s makers demarcate Chinese manufacturing as a site of expertise in implementing this vision. China’s makers demonstrate that the future of making—if to materialize in the ways currently envisioned by writers, politicians, and scholars (...) of the global tech industry—rests on taking seriously the technological and cultural fabrics of professional making outside familiar information technology innovation hubs like Silicon Valley: making-do, mass production, and reuse. I trace back to China’s first hackerspace, documenting how a collective of makers began to move away from appropriating Western concepts of openness toward promoting China as source for knowledge, creativity, and innovation. This article demonstrates that when China’s makers set up open hardware businesses and articulate a unique culture of “hacking with Chinese characteristics,” they draw boundaries between the professional making they saw embodied in Chinese industrial production and the hobbyist making embodied in Western histories and cultures of hacking. In so doing, they position China as site of both technological and cultural expertise, intervening in dominant conceptions of computing that split manufacturing and innovation along geographical lines. This article contributes to critical scholarship of innovation and making cultures, technological expertise, and authorship. (shrink)

Global production networks connect multiple producers involved in fragmented manufacturing processes. Major brands and retailers, considered as lead firms, are under increasing pressure to ensure products made through GPNs are produced sustainably. Theories of governance developed to understand dynamics in outsourced production can provide insight into this issue. However, these theories and related empirical research have often focused on relationships between lead firms and upper-tier suppliers. When manufacturing involves multiple fragmented stages, understanding the role of lead firms (...) becomes more difficult. This article considers new governance roles that lead firms, as buyers, are playing when attempting to promote sustainable practices across all stages of production for buyer-driven industries. The focus is exploring the nature of new governance approaches which lead firms have developed in order to address diverse sustainability challenges found within GPNs, particularly related to lower-tier suppliers. These approaches can involve lead firms working through vertical buyer–seller links or developing new horizontal relationships, which link lead firms with lower-tier suppliers and governance processes in these suppliers’ local productive systems. The findings draw from field research examining how top UK garment retailers provide governance to producers involved in creating cotton garments in India and a review of publicised policies and practices of these retailers related to promoting sustainable production. Five types of governance mechanisms that can involve vertical or horizontal links are identified. Considering the growth of new governance relationships expands previous conceptions of the roles of lead firm governance. (shrink)

Analysis of the material properties of the Internet reveals its true weight: the mass of component routers, switches, cables, satellites, cellnet masts, and of course computers, and the vast network of resource extraction, manufacturing, energy generation, and waste in which its functioning is embedded. Equally important is understanding the massless but highly regulated system of software and legislation affecting the ostensibly free and open evolution of network media. The chapter traces some exemplary standards bodies responsible for the design of (...) key features such as protocols and codecs, and discusses the vexed dialectic of intellectual property rights and the notion of an information commons, arguing that the Internet bears the hallmarks of three major types of institutional construction, those proper to the nation-state, to commerce, and to network systems themselves. It concludes with a critical challenge to future archaeology: the ephemerality of digital files. (shrink)

This study explores the downsizing propensity of family and non-family firms by considering their territorial embeddedness during both periods of economic stability and financial crisis. By drawing on a panel dataset of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 2002–2015, we show that, all things being equal, family firms have a lower propensity to downsizing than non-family firms. When considering the effect of territorial embeddedness, we found that territorially embedded family firms have an even lower propensity to downsizing than their (...) non-family counterparts. Furthermore, the concern of territorially embedded family firms for their employees’ welfare was particularly pronounced during the years of the global financial crisis. This result is explained by the existence of socially proximate relationships with the firms’ immediate surroundings, based on similarity and a sense of belonging, which push deeply rooted family firms to treat their employees as salient stakeholders during hard times. Overall, our study stresses the importance of local roots in moderating the relationship between family firms and downsizing. (shrink)

Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2009. 320pp. pbk. $19.95 ISBN-13: 978-0816666119. In Games of Empire , Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter expand an earlier study of “the video game industry as an aspect of an emerging postindustrial, post-Fordist capitalism” (xxix) to argue that videogames are “exemplary media of Empire” (xxix). Their notion of “Empire” is based on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire (2000), (...) which characterizes the contemporary world order as a decentralized system of global economic, political, and economic power that transcends national boundaries. In the view of the authors, Hardt and Negri’s account sets itself apart from other analyses of international politics by offering a “comprehensive account of conditions of work, forms of subjectivity, and types of struggle in contemporary capital” (xx). Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter thus divide Games of Empire into three sections to reflect each of these aspects of Empire ’s argument, seeing their work as the first account to explore “virtual games within a system of global ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle” (xxix). Books in the University of Minnesota Press’s Electronic Mediations series “explore the humanistic and social implications” of new technologies that spark “significant changes in society and culture, politics and economics, thinking and being.” That’s an abstract goal, and one that Games of Empire surely meets. Yet at times it can be difficult to understand exactly which specific intervention this book seeks to make. It is unclear whether the authors of Games of Empire see their work as an indictment of game scholars’ lack of attention to political economy, or whether it’s a work of political theory hoping to show that other disciplines should be paying more attention to the production and play of videogames. Because Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter don’t directly criticize previous political critiques of gaming—such as Edward Castronova’s exploration of the “porous membrane” allowing two-way traffic between virtual economies and those of the real world, or Alexander Galloway’s unraveling of control protocols in algorithmic design, or Ian Bogost’s idea of political procedural rhetoric—they sometimes leave the reader wondering how to situate the book in the broader discourse on games and politics, either separately or together. Thus, Games of Empire might best be seen as an introduction to the writings of Hardt and Negri for game players and designers, rather than as a text for communicating the basic concepts of game studies and design. It is neither a truly new theory of games or digital media, nor is it a new theory of Empire—and that’s not a criticism. It is instead an introduction to Empire through popular culture, as Zizek does for Lacan in Looking Awry . If one were teaching an introductory course on contemporary political theory, this book would offer obvious inroads into Negri and Hardt’s thinking for a number of reasons. Despite its radical ideological bent, the book isn’t off-putting to readers who don’t necessarily share the authors’ politics. It synthesizes complex ideas from difficult thinkers like Marx, Foucault, and Guattari while integrating modifications and critiques of Empire theory itself. And although the book is dense, sometimes feeling longer than it actually is (just over 200 pages), Games of Empire maintains a breezy readability by tightly coupling core concepts of Empire theory to well-known games and widely-publicized conflicts within the videogame industry. The first section of the book focuses on immaterial labor, the accumulation of “cognitive capital,” and the global process of manufacturing videogame consoles. It is significant for the authors that videogames began as hacker experiments within research institutes of the military industrial complex, programmed on stolen time, before becoming a commodity (7). This is the first in a string of examples showing how creative dissidence and conflict fuel the continuing evolution of Empire’s control. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter explain that the videogame industry now constitutes an international production apparatus dominating both creative work in developed nations and manual labor in developing ones. Because game industries in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan are predominately non-unionized, they serve as an exemplary system for analyzing how global capital exploits contemporary intellectual work—including an excellent analysis of the “EA Spouse” scandal of 2004. On the side of the consumer, the authors argue that rabid “console races” that drive the industry forward from a technological perspective serve to structure gamer identity and combat piracy; later in the book, these machines offer a window into the worlds of Congolese coltan mining and electronic waste (222-224). In the second section, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter move on to deep case studies of individual games to show how the most popular game genres embed imperial assumptions about conflict, exchange, and urban life. First they argue that military training games such as Full Spectrum Warrior —co-developed by university researchers, industry developers, and military contractors—contribute to the “banalization” of war, a subjective state wherein perpetual preparedness for war is accepted as a part of everyday life (100). Chapter five covers Michel Foucalt’s notion of “biopower,” the extension of capital accumulation to life itself. The authors argue that virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft , which take market capitalism as a given and force players into essentialist roles and racial antagonisms, are organized to maximize control and profit (often on the backs of virtual currency “farmers” in China and southeast Asia). Finally, they criticize the naïve assumption that humor and cynicism in the popular sandbox game franchise Grand Theft Auto offer any remedy to its racialized, violent content. Instead, such games indulge and normalize the fantasy of getting rich at any cost by keeping the realities of contemporary urban life and corporate greed at a safe distance (181). Part three of Games of Empire focuses on “games of multitude,” a preliminary attempt to escape from Empire’s order through alternate modes of videogame development and play. Multitude is defined dialectically, as “the engine and the enemy” of Empire (187). This is the most important, yet also most contradictory section of the text. It lays bare the process by which Empire and its media feed our creative and intellectual development to overabundance. At a certain point, the force of the multitude reaches such a level that it threatens the stability of Empire; however, instead of following Hardt and Negri’s utopian assumptions about the radical potential of the multitude, the authors here follow Paolo Virno’s warning that Empire is “very good at adopting apparently iconoclastic practices and utopian ideas as management techniques and revenue sources” (188). At every turn, advances in player configurative power provide new sources of revenue and advertising angles for the game industry. A disappointing shortcoming of these latter pages is the lack of truly new examples for radical resistance within game development. Instead, it turns out that the radical left seems satisfied with the same mild successes that the left-of-center also has celebrated: artist’s mods, virtual world activism, and critical counterplay within strategy- and wargames. Having been frequently cited by many authors before Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, this idea of subversion or resistance through play feels tired and unpersuasive. It is unclear if the authors believe it is possible to embrace game design itself as a way of pursuing what they call “exodus” from Empire, or if an all-too-fashionable subversion is the only workable strategy. While the book does explore how the earliest independent game studios were eventually subverted and incorporated into the game industry proper, it doesn’t affirm or critique more recent non-commercial, DIY game development projects such as Klik-of-the-Month Club and Ludum Dare. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter’s analysis of so-called “tactical games,” including the editorial works of La Molleindustria, leads to an even more ambivalent take on the contemporary design ecology. At the conclusion of his essay on “Countergaming,” Galloway asserts that avant-garde videogame artists “should create new grammars of action […] should create alternative algorithms” (Galloway 125). Yet Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter characterize works such as McDonald’s Video Game and Oiligarchy as didactic, suggesting that the role of radical political games might be “limited to that of agitprop” (199). They are concerned that games like those of Molleindustria rigidly structure the activities of their players in order to prove a point. Yet, despite their repeated assertion that the equation of greater interactivity with democratic digital liberation is flawed, the authors see potential in policy simulators that “allow players to edit or tweak” (202) their parameters in response to what Bogost has called simulation fever , the simultaneous drive toward and fear of simulation (Bogost 108). The possibility of practicing radical design is bucked, and early attempts at critical game development like those of Molleindustria’s seem to be relegated to the status of exceptions that prove the rule for player-centered exodus. Overall, there is one glaring question Games of Empire leaves unanswered: how exactly are videogames the “exemplary media” of Empire, and what are the implications of videogames being exemplary in this way? Presumably Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter want to avoid essentialist claims, so they’re not keen on following Wark’s desire to mark “the game’s difference from [legacy media] as something that speaks to changes in the overall structure of social and technical relations” (Wark 225). It is also unclear how the production apparatuses, labor standards, and subjectivizing processes involved in the creation and use of other any other kind of digital media would fail to justify their equally exemplary status. Even the book’s concluding paragraph holds that virtual games “are one molecular component of this undecidable collective mutation” (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter 229) of intellect, labor, and daily life. In the end, the authors seem to back away from their focus on games as exemplary to bring their work in line with broader theories of the gradual digitization of the everyday, in line with Galloway and Manovich. Despite these flaws, there is an undeniable elegance to Games of Empire ’s contrasting of gaming’s overwhelmingly imperial content with its multitudinous form . And its ambivalence about the potential of independent or political game development might be seen by scholars of Empire as a strength rather than a weakness, an acceptance that every new expression of multitude offers another opportunity for the expansion of Empire. The book also functions as a strong, all-encompassing call to greater responsibility on the part of mainstream game developers to be more conscious of the ideologies they embed in their work, of the way their intellectual property is used and manipulated by those who employ them, and of the material impact their industry has on the world at large. For players it offers a toolbox of concepts for radical examinations of their own play activities, asking them to be more cognizant of the consequences of their consumption of digital media and the ways in which their virtual lives interface with the real. REFERENCES Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Castranova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games . Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig. Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Galloway, Alexander. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture . Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. (shrink)

In the mid-1990s, global labour standards emerged as a new and important are of concern for socially responsible investors, especially with respect to investments in the "problematic" footwear, apparel, and toy industries. In this paper, I elucidate the primary areas of concern for investors and discuss a framework for evaluating firms'' labor standards performance. In addition, I argue that today''s sweatshop debates follow closely those of centuries ago, with the standard economic defense of low wage manufacturing on the (...) one hand, and the activists'' protests against poor conditions and wages on the other. An examination of this historical context reveals a promising middle ground in this ongoing debate. (shrink)

This paper uses WIOD data to calculate and analyze the dominant comparative advantage of Chinese manufacturing global value chain based on the WWZ method and empirically studies the influence of digitization on the competitiveness of manufacturing GVC. The main findings are as follows: The competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing GVC has been improved as a whole. The GVC competitiveness of different types of industries is quite different: GVC in middle- and low-knowledge-intensive industries have the highest competitiveness, while (...) those with middle- and high-knowledge-intensive industries have the lowest competitiveness and apparent shortboard industries. Digitization is conducive for enhancing the competitiveness of manufacturing GVC. In terms of industries, digitization has a significant positive effect on the GVC competitiveness of middle and high-knowledge-intensive industries but not on low knowledge ones. As for the sources of digital input, the positive effect is more outstanding. Also, it is more remarkable when it comes to the software and information technology service industry. As for the mechanism of action, labor productivity is an effective way to improve the manufacturing GVC competitiveness digitally. Finally, after a robustness test, the positive effect of the digital input remains robust. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, China has launched a nationwide endeavor to push domestic firms up the value chain. This article explores why, in some localities, Chinese firms had significant success in upgrading, while in other localities, firms were paradoxically trapped in a race-to-the-bottom competition. Drawing on national economic census data, a firm-level survey, and in-depth interviews, the article conducts a controlled comparison of China’s largest electronics manufacturing bases in the Yangtze and the Pearl River Deltas. It argues that (...) the local government’s choice of global business allies shaped the upgrading behavior of domestic firms. When local governments allied with large multinational corporations at the top of the value chain, they reinforced the hierarchical structure of production, shrank the upgrading space for domestic firms, and squeezed them to the bottom of the value chain. In contrast, alliances with small foreign invested firms at the bottom helped break the hierarchical segregation and held more potential for local learning and innovation. The article sheds new light on the question of when industrial policies succeed or fail to facilitate domestic upgrading in a globalized era. (shrink)

The globalization of production and trade has contributed to the rise in complex global value chains where the reach of state regulation is limited. As an alternative, private regulation, developed and administered by companies, industry associations, and nongovernmental organizations, has emerged to safeguard economic, environmental, and social sustainability in producer countries and along the value chain. The academic literature on private regulation in global value chains has grown over the last decade, but currently few major reviews of the (...) research have been undertaken. This paper examines peer-reviewed research in the relevant disciplines published in academic journals up to December 2011. Our goal is to identify and classify the topics and theories in the global value chain literature. We conclude that the number of articles explicitly examining private regulation, in a global value chain context, is relatively small when considering the importance and growth of these chains in the world’s economy. We also conclude that agriculture, forestry, and apparel manufacturing are the most often studied economic sectors; in contrast, other sectors, such as the information, communication and technology, with their complex global value chains, and often problematic environmental and social conditions, are understudied. (shrink)

This essay deploys the joint lenses of branding and space to examine the hegemonic operation of the Apple brand in the global culture industry. It does so by analyzing China’s ‘fake Apple Store’ event in 2011, which began with an American expat blogger’s discovery and subsequently caught the attention of global news media. While copying the look of an official Apple Store, these retailers displayed and sold genuine products originally assembled in China. Probing the cultural logic that gave (...) rise to the event, I argue that China’s ‘fake’ Apple Store emblematizes the power relations and subject positions that emanate from Apple’s global hegemony. The Apple Store, as a branded environment, is best seen as a heterotopia whose interpellating mechanism relies on the extensive-intensive character of the intellectual property rights regime. While China’s copycat Apple Store can be seen as an attempt at a production of sameness, the ‘user-generated’ charge of its ‘fakery’ stems from the ‘distributed’ power of the Apple brand, which operates through a production of difference. Even though the varied responses to the event reveal the contradiction within Apple’s extensive global reach, it more importantly points to a condition wherein consumer turned ‘prod-user’ subjects act as self-enlisted agents who work to perpetuate the brand’s design-intensive value regime. While the spectacle of ‘Chinese fakery’ manifests the ideological work of IPR in naturalizing the distinction between the copy and the fake, the extensive-intensive operation of the brand, embodied by the Apple Store, also undermines the ability of consumer subjects to meaningfully engage the ‘Chinese reality’ that is manufacturing labor. (shrink)

The paper suggests that some of the preconditions for peace may have a better chance of being fulfilled in the 1990's than they had previously during this century of wars and other bloody upheavals. Most importantly, it highlights the fact (through giving examples) that business can use the sophisticated technology developed for arms manufacture for the production of consumer goods; so that the argument that industries will fail and employees lose their jobs if there is global arms reduction no (...) longer holds. Ways of dampening demand for arms are also discussed. (shrink)

Immunization plays a crucial role in global health security, preventing public health emergencies of international concern and protecting individuals from infectious disease outbreaks, yet these critical public health benefits are dependent on immunization law. Where public health law has become central to preventing, detecting, and responding to infectious disease, public health law reform is seen as necessary to implement the Global Health Security Agenda. This article examines national immunization laws as a basis to implement the GHSA and promote (...) the public's health, analyzing the scope and content of these laws to prevent infectious disease across Sub-Saharan Africa. Undertaking policy surveillance of national immunization laws in 20 Sub-Saharan African countries, this study: developed a legal framework to map the legal attributes relevant to immunization; created an assessment tool to determine the presence of these attributes under national immunization law; and applied this assessment tool to code national legal landscapes. An analysis of these coded laws highlights legal attributes that govern vaccine requirements, supply chains, vaccine administration standards, and medicines quality and manufacturer liability. Based upon this international policy surveillance, it will be crucial to undertake legal epidemiology research across countries, examining the influence of immunization law on vaccination rates and disease outbreaks. (shrink)

An ever more aggressive anti-migration propaganda war is being waged by the majority of British media, where migration in any form is consistently portrayed on the basis of forming and consolidating a response to a security threat. While tens of thousands of migrant workers are exchanging their sweated labour for meagre wages in the 3-D jobs — dirty, dangerous and degrading — in Britain's food-processing, electronic manufacturing, catering, cleaning and hospitality industries outside any mechanism of labour protection, Britain today (...) is still declining to at least ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families in effect since last year. In the post-Morecambe debate on migration and demand for regularizing gangmasters, policing and immigration raids are seen as the quick cure for migrant labour exploitation. The argument sounds as if the only way to get rid of employers’ violation of minimum labour rights is to get rid of migrant workers. Britain has forgotten to ask — who are the migrant workers? They are the ones who sweep British roads, clean British supermarkets and serve you food in restaurants in every high street. They are the ones who sew the clothes you wear, put together your microwaves and process the British salads that you have on your dinner table everyday. Migrant workers are people you don't meet everyday but upon whom you depend. To find out about the chain of exploitation in which migrant workers live and the impact of British immigration controls that are fundamental to their lives, I lived undercover among the Chinese workers from whom I learnt a great deal. (shrink)

The men and women in Invisible Hands reveal the human rights abuses occurring behind the scenes of the global economy. These narrators--including phone manufacturers in China, copper miners in Zambia, garment workers in Bangladesh, and farmers around the world--reveal the secret history of the things we buy, including lives and communities devastated by low wages, environmental degradation, and political repression. Sweeping in scope and rich in detail, these stories capture the interconnectivity of all people struggling to support themselves and (...) their families. (shrink)

: In 1998, 39 pharmaceutical manufacturers sued the government of South Africa to prevent the implementation of a law designed to facilitate access to AIDS drugs at low cost. The companies accused South Africa, the country with the largest population of individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the world, of circumventing patent protections guaranteed by intellectual property rules that were included in the latest round of world trade agreements. The pharmaceutical companies dropped their lawsuit in the spring of 2001 after an (...) avalanche of negative publicity. Yet, despite the government's victory, AIDS drugs remain very expensive in South Africa, and the government still refuses to provide antiretroviral therapy to adults. These events have shone a spotlight, not only on the possibilities for coordinated political activism in the era of instant global communications, but also on the tangled social, economic, and political dimensions of AIDS treatment in poor countries. (shrink)

In February 2019, the German federal government announced its new “National Industry Strategy 2030.” Many economies—including the United Kingdom (2017), European Union (2017), and Saudi Arabia (2018)—have announced national industrial strategies addressing the competitive threat of the People’s Republic of China’s 2015 “Made in China 2025” 5-year economic plan to become a global leader in 10 advanced technology manufacturing sectors. The use of the 20th-century term “industrial policy” heralds back to public policy antecedents of what is now evolving (...) globally in the 21st century as national “industrial strategy,” a concept explored in this article. Unlike traditional 20th-century efforts at industrial policy (which focused on public policy efforts to maintain domestic primacy of declining, older industries), national industrial strategy recognizes (and generally accepts) the international global economy as a foundation of competition. Most importantly, national industrial strategy focuses on technologically emerging industries as well as the national government working collaborative in a partnership with these emerging industries to meet future growth challenges and opportunities. (shrink)

Initial moves to develop a new generation of commercial supersonic transports to succeed Concorde are already under way. Aircraft manufacturers promise a plane that will withstand both economic and environmental scrutiny. Yet, the crash of an Air France Concorde at Paris in July 2000 has caused further doubts about the viability of SSTs. This study revisits the previous debate surrounding Concorde to explore the potential for current initiatives to overcome the public’s anxiety of further environmental degradation. This article seeks, therefore, (...) to examine the role that environmental issues and campaign groups played in the development of the first generation of SSTs, concentrating on the influence of global environmental arguments on political decision making. Debate surrounding the global environmental impact of SSTs foreshadows later attention to human impact at the planetary scale. It provides the first illustration of the often complex links between attempted protection of the global environment and political and public perceptions of national vested interests. (shrink)