Global production post Covid-19: Assessing the geographical restructuring of firms and industries in global production networks (Covid-19 and GPNs)

• Applicants: Dr. Florian Butollo; Professor Dr. Martin Krzywdzinski; Gale Raj-Reichert, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495011805

The project aims to understand how and to what extent changes to lead firm strategies and lead firm-supplier relationships in response to the Covid-19 crisis lead to geographical restructuring of GPNs with particular reference to the impact of government policies and digitalization efforts. The analysis covers four research questions: Q1. How has the Covid-19 crisis changed lead firm strategies on offshore outsourcing, nearshoring, and reshoring, and lead firm-supplier relationships in GPNs? Q2. How have government crisis and industrial policies as well as digitalisation opportunities affected the outcomes from Q1? Q3. How and why do the combined findings from Q1 and Q2 result in the restructuring of geographical locations of production in GPNs? Q4. In what ways does the multi-disciplinary perspective advance our understanding of the restructuring of GPNs in response to a global crisis? The empirical objective of the project is to analyse the interactions of: 1) the near and long-term responses to the Covid-19 crisis and their impacts on lead firms and first-tier and lower tier suppliers in the automotive, electronics and logistics industry GPNs; 2) government crisis and industrial policies which influence lead firm strategies and their relationships with suppliers in GPNs; and 3) the influence of digitalisation opportunities through automation and the digitalisation of supply chains on the restructuring of geographies of production. The theoretical objective is to conduct a multi-disciplinary analysis of the combined effect of the four variables lead firm strategies, lead firm-supplier relationships, government policies, and technological change, for a comprehensive understanding of the restructuring of geographies of production through offshoring, nearshoring and/or reshoring in response to a global crisis. Related to this is our aim to advance theory-building from a multi-disciplinary approach combining perspectives from economic geography, industrial sociology, and political economy for a new framework for analysing impacts of global crises on the reconfigurations of GPNs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants