Global value chain literature has proposed alternative forms of governance in explaining the global structure of industries and their dynamics. Despite the interest of those studies on how lead firms organize manufacturing activities at the global level, this framework has not been used to...

The paper is oriented at improving the understanding of internationalization strategies of firms by applying the global value chain studies at the firm level, in the context of SMEs. An original contribution of our paper is to apply such theoretical approach to the Italian model of economic...

The concept of upgrading plays an important role within the global value chain (GVC) theoretical framework (Gereffi et al. 2005). The globalization of supply chains and the presence in the market of low cost producers coming from emergent economies pose serious threats for business that based...