Competitive Advantage in Global Production Networks: Air Freight Services and the Electronics Industry in Southeast Asia
结合波特的钻石理论和全球生产网络研究，分析航空货运服务空间不均的原因和影响，通过新加坡、马来西亚和菲律宾的货运代理案例，说明企业和地方如何获得竞争优势，以及航空货运服务的地理差异如何影响电子企业的运营和绩效。
Abstract: Drawing upon Porter's diamond theory of competitive advantage and recent work on global production networks (GPNs), this article examines the causes and consequences of spatially uneven air freight services. Air freight flows have grown rapidly because airborne trade enables firms to reconcile time‐based competition and spatially dispersed production. The importance of air freight services in this regard is particularly relevant to electronics manufacturers. Case studies of freight forwarders—the traditional intermediaries between the firms that send and receive goods by air and the airlines that actually move air freight from city to city—in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines are used to demonstrate the manner in which firms and places attain a competitive advantage in the performance of these services and how geographic variation in air freight services, in turn, affects the operations and performance of electronics firms. Finally, the article discusses the importance of these services in mediating the ability of firms and places to move to new positions along the value chains of which they are a part as their former roles become untenable.