COMMODITY CHAINS, SERVICES AND DEVELOPMENT - THEORY AND PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE FROM THE TOURISM INDUSTRY

Global commodity chains (GCC) present a fairly new and innovative appr oach for understanding the prospects for development among Third World countries within a larger environment characterized by globalization. To date, most research using the framework concentrates on the changi ng organization of manufacturing activities and helps to explain why t he chains touch down where they do. This article concentrates on two r elated questions: what can commodity chains tell us about the globaliz ation of services and to what extent do services suggest the need to r efine the GCC approach? Both questions are examined by focusing upon t ourism, the largest service activity in the world. Concentrating on ho tels and airlines, the article demonstrates that tourism services have become internationalized in a manner unlike manufacturing activities. Most notably, organizational or governance structures do not conform to either buyer-driven or producer-driven models frequently predicted by GCC analysis. The article concludes that while commodity chain anal ysis is useful for examining the political economy of tourism, especia lly in highlighting power and exchange relationships, it must be broad ened to 'account' fully for the unique organization of the global tour ism industry.