New Faces of Globalization: Market Integration, Production Disintegration, Genesis of New Global Organizational Structures for Production and Trade

Due to trade liberalisation and ITC revolution, companies could imagine new and better ways of creating and delivering value. In search of higher efficiency, competitiveness and profits, they reorganise, choosing to focus on their core competencies and to globally outsource, or offshore non-core activities and functions. As a result, reorganisation and relocation became the new forces of change across economies, leading to the rise of new, more diverse and more efficient global organisational structures for investment, production and trade. A number of developing countries with adequate comparative advantages could better benefit from these processes, accelerating their own industralization and modernization, increasing their access to new technologies and managerial know-how and turning themselves into successful, high-rate growing, „ emerging†economies. The paper concludes that under such a global backdrop, taking part in global value chains (GVC) and in international production networks (IPNs) could be the best strategic option for both company strategies and governmental catch-up policies, provided that, or especially if companies enjoy high competences and tacit skills which make them capable of assuming complex tasks and of climbing further the technological ladder.