Sustainable value chains
Global Production Network (GPN)
An analytical framework, developed at the University of Manchester, that explains global production through the networks of firms, institutions, and places that create, capture, and distribute value.
Definition
A global production network is the globally organised nexus of interconnected functions, operations, and transactions through which a product or service is produced, distributed, and consumed, governed by lead firms and embedded in specific places and institutions. The GPN framework — set out by Neil Coe and Henry Yeung in "Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World" (2015) — analyses how value is created, enhanced, and captured, how corporate and institutional power shapes networks, and how regions couple strategically with them.
References
framework content and lineage
Overview
What it means
Where global commodity chain and value chain analysis follow a product along a chain, GPN analysis emphasises networks and territories: why lead firms locate functions where they do, and what regional development outcomes — in jobs, skills, and value capture — result. "Strategic coupling" describes how regions plug into networks on favourable terms, a key idea for sustainable and inclusive industrial policy.
How it is used
Researchers and policymakers use GPN analysis to study industrial upgrading, labour conditions, and environmental footprints embedded in trade, and to design policies that improve a region's position within global production.
Why it matters
It connects the geography of globalised production to who benefits from it — the question at the heart of socially sustainable supply chains.
Review
Public comments appear only after editor acceptance. Draft comments stay in the review queue.
Reviewers choose the definition or an overview paragraph, leave a comment or replacement, and attach evidence or a source link.
Editors compare reviewer cards side by side. AI may help find agreement, conflicts, unsupported claims and possible source issues.
Only an editor-accepted synthesis changes the public page. Reviewer identities are shown only with consent and an editorial decision to attribute them.
Submitted reviews stay private until an editor decides whether to accept and attribute them.
Contribute to this entry
Help improve this definition
Your contribution is private while it is checked. Nothing changes on this page unless an editor accepts it.
Loading verified endorsements… Endorsements are not votes and never determine publication.
Endorse this definition
Endorse the exact version shown here. This is not a vote, and publication remains an editorial decision.
Review board
Comment on a specific line. Each reviewer stays separate until an editor accepts a merged draft.
Each person comments on the definition or overview in their own draft card, with role, evidence and suggested wording kept together.
AI can compare comments against the current text, flag conflicting claims, surface missing evidence and identify where reviewers agree.
An editor merges compatible suggestions into a draft change, checks sources, records disagreements and decides what can be published.