Measuring Firm Activities

My new research project is largely about how fragmented production networks affects firms' ability to exert pressure on suppliers/affiliates as well as their ability to express power in relation to governments. There are many conceptual issues that I need to address as I begin this research.

1) Power. Start with Barnett/Duvall as well as Strange and her typologies of power. I am interested in multiple expressions of power. First, how do different nodes in a complex production network exert pressure on each other? This pressure could be related to contracts (pricing of inputs/outputs) as well as to standards for production processes (adherence to fair labor standards) and standards for ethical sourcing (particularly related to environmental issues). Power here can be top down (buyers exerting pressure on suppliers) or bottom up (suppliers refusing to conform to buyers' demands). Second, to what extend are firms able to extract benefits from governments? Third, to what extent are governments able to regulate firms (and what part of production networks - lead firms or suppliers). Fourth, to what extent can societal interest groups, in particular workers rights and environmental NGOs, influence firm behavior and government regulation? Finally, how do different actors organize into institutional configurations that transcend geographic and/or market boundaries, if at all?

2) Fragmentation. How is this best measured? Conceptually, I am interested in how complexity both within firms as well as in their supply chain affects their political power. By political power I mean their ability to influence government policies in areas that direct affect their business as well as their ability to obtain incentives from governments. Thus, the central "thing" I need to measure is how much of multinationals' activities are contained within the firm, across borders but within affiliates, and outsourced. Ideally, it would be great to trace value chains at the firm level so that we could know how many firms supply a parent with the same input, etc. However, that may be very difficult. Another way to measure this is thru value added. A third is to get data on the percentage of MNE's exports and imports that are between parent and affiliate vs. parent and non-affiliate vs. affiliate and affiliate.