The organizational governance of the trans-border production networks:a case study of Taiwanese IT companies in Suzhou area
跨界生产网络的组织治理模式——以苏州地区信息电子业台商为例

This article aims to explore the formation of the new industrial space in the Suzhou area in China driven by recent trans-border investment of Taiwanese IT companies in the last eight years and investigate the governance mechanisms of the local supply chains as well as its implication to regional development. We observed that the foreign brand-name companies had played important roles in propelling this wave of Taiwanese IT companies' trans-border investment in the Suzhou area. Although the strategic cooperation between Taiwanese OEM/ODM companies and foreign brand-name companies was consolidated, but the pressure from the foreign brand-name companies has changed the governance mechanisms of Taiwanese companies' supply chains and forged the dynamics of spatial agglomeration. We argue that the production networks' trans-border extension interweave with the exercise of power between enterprise organizations; and as to the new industrial space in the developing countries that were formed by the global production networks' transplantation, besides the essence of interdependence that characterized the industrial district's inter-firm relationship, economic geographers shouldn't ignore the asymmetric power relations that were embodied in the global commodity chains.