CORMSIS Seminar "Blood and Place-based Relationship and Creation of Supply Networks: An Exploratory Case Study of Used Cooking Oil Collectors in China" - Zhaohui Wu (Arizona State University) Event

Event details

In emerging economies, rapid urbanization forces rural population to migrate and work in manufacturing and services sectors. Since the overall economy is also experiencing industrialization, we see the creation of new industry sectors and drastic change of existing ones. Studies have found that that villagers from one region or social-ethnic group create and control industries such as clothing, transportation logistics, specialty food restaurants, e-commerce merchants, printing and garbage collection. This phenomenon is observed in countries such as India, China, Egypt and Philippines among others. However, there is little study as to how migrant workers create and control these (production) supply chain network and the functioning and characteristics of these networks. In this grounded case study, we explore how social groups based on kinships and connection to a geographic place come to create and control the production supply network in cities and eventually the industry sector across the country. More specifically, we investigate the creation and evolution of supply networks of used cooking oil (UCO) collection in a metropolitan city in China. The supply network is largely made up of migrant workers from villages in Jiangsu Province. Our study contributes to the understanding of kinship- and place-based supply networks and industry categories creation.