The Role of SMEs in Global Production Networks
基于一家瑞典中小企业向其印度供应商支付生活工资的案例，研究揭示了中小企业在有争议的全球生产网络中扮演的独特角色，并推动生活工资研究从概念讨论转向实证分析。
Anti-sweatshop activists have turned global production networks (GPNs) into contested organizational fields. Although this contest has triggered the growth of an extensive literature on contested GPNs, the scholarly conversation is still limited in two important ways: First, it ignores or dismisses the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in GPNs and, second, it assumes that firms are driven solely by rational profit-maximizing motives. Based on a study of a Swedish SME’s payment of living wages at its Indian supplier, this article addresses these limitations by demonstrating how SMEs’ peculiarities allow them to assume a distinct role in contested GPNs. Furthermore, this article contributes to the scholarly conversation about living wages by providing a much-needed move beyond conceptual discussions into empirical studies of the underlying trade-offs of paying living wages.