Global supply chains and compliance capabilities for new regulatory regimes

Opening up North American markets in 1994 lowered entry barriers to international trade. However, new non-statutory regulations have modified previous ways global value chains were governed, reducing supplier substitutability capacity of lead firms, increasing rigidity of governance structures and raising market entry barriers for new suppliers. The paper is based upon a study on compliance capability building along international fresh produce supply chains from Mexico to US (2007-2008). The main regulatory regimes these are to comply with are rather self-regulations and Public Private Partnerships (―voluntary‖). This is a comparative case study of 4 international fresh produce supply chains (11 firms), based upon small sample size indexes construction, following a selective/examplanary reasoning. It was assessed the relationship between compliance levels and different regulatory regimes, it is argued that, although security responsibilities are being transferred equally to all supply chains to develop private hierarchies to prevent bioterrorism acts, there are unintended consequences according to their capability building for each regulatory regime.