Convention Theory and the Governance of Global Value Chains

Convention theory has been a key analytical contributor to the understanding of global value chain governance, both through engagements with the original Boltanski and Thévenot’s realms of justification and with Eymard-Duvernay’s typologies of quality conventions. This chapter reveals the genesis of these contributions and adaptations as both convention theory and global value chain analysis developed in the past two to three decades. It also examines how convention theory has indirectly contributed to recent work on power in global value chains and provides some directions for a future research agenda.