Bridging the Digital-Industrial Divide in the Law on Global Value Chains

This workshop aims to address the intersection of the industrial and digital dimension in value chain 
research. It brings together scholars interested in and working at the intersection of value chains 
and digitalization from different angles of inquiry. By bringing in conversation different seemingly 
separate theoretical approaches, the workshop combines research on the increasing importance of 
technology in the governance of industrial chains, both for the organization of production and for 
achieving broader goals of sustainability, and related industrial transformations.

 
Discussions in digitalization and technology will be also put in relation with scholarship that ponder 
the use of imaginaries and concepts of the value chain to reveal specific patterns in digital 
organization and the constitutive role of the law therein. In digitalization discourses, the term of the 
value chain may return as a helpful conceptual tool to make sense of the organization of the digital 
economy and for emphasizing the industrial underpinning of our digital technologies. These are 
extremely relevant and needed conversations, but they still lack a common basis for conversation 
and attempts of systematization