The Globalizing Services Value Chain (Paperback)

Starting from a virtually zero base, the globalizing services value chain has been growing exponentially during the first decade of the XXI century, and has showed a remarkable resilience to the negative impact of the 2008-2009 worldwide recession. The core engine of the GSVC is the unceasing attempt on the part of large and advanced capitalist enterprises to cut costs, in order to survive and thrive in the midst of global oligopolistic competition. A crucial characteristic of the globalizing services value chain GSVC, and one that goes a long way to explain its extraordinary expansive drive, is that it affects not only traditional services, but also many activities which were traditionally embodied in the industrial manufacturing process. Thanks to technological progress in information and communications technologies (ICTs) and other areas, these activities can presently be disembodied. Such a vertical disintegration of the production process allows the newly-created services activities to be performed in a remote location, transformed into informational inputs, and purchased through market transactions.