Global Supply Chains is a level 6 module offered to third year students of the BSc Business Management (NN12). The module investigates companies’ outsourcing strategies, i.e. the growing practice of parcelling out, delegating, or purchasing at least part of their activities from foreign suppliers, whether dependent or independent actors. The main focus is on primary sectors, namely energy, agriculture, non-energy minerals, and forestry/fisheries. It critically examines what value creating activities firms tend to outsource, how, why and to whom, and the relative implications. Outsourcing strategies are understood in a wider international context as characterised by multiple players, in particular global institutions, global private players, states, consumers, trade unions and social movements. For the analysis of global supply chains the module explores and applies different mainstream and non-mainstream theoretical frameworks from different disciplines, namely global supply chain management (business studies) and global value/commodity chains (economic sociology, development studies, economic geography).
