Overview

Value Chains

The information resources in this subject guide have been identified to assist with research on how companies, governments, and societies respond strategically to the competitive environment of a globalizing economy. The fundamental mode of analysis of this research is typically through the delineation of supply chains or value chains within the structure of particular industries. This guide is designed for use by students within the Markets & Management Studies program at Duke and by researchers in Duke's Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness.

Getting Started

Become familiar with the Duke Libraries homepage (library.duke.edu) especially the tabs under "Search Resources".

The Catalog tab searches the online catalog for the holdings of all of the libraries at Duke. After a search has been executed (e.g. automobile industry), note the useful faceting of the results by sub-topic and by geographical region. Use the Advanced Search option for additional functionality in combining terms or in limiting the scope of the search by date of publication, library, format, or language.

The Articles tab enables umbrella searches for journal and newspaper articles across a pre-selected set of databases. Use the Advanced Search under the Articles tab to target a search to a set of databases in broad subject areas like business or the social sciences.

The E-Journals tab leads to the numerous periodicals (like the Economist or Wall Street Journal) to which the Duke Libraries provide electronic access.

The Databases tab directs the user to clickable links to the customized interfaces of specialized databases like Standard & Poor's or the Economist Intelligence Unit, many of which are not included in the cross-database searches under the Articles tab. A number of these databases are described on the topical pages of this subject guide indexed to the left.

Catalog: Many headings for specific industries such as "textile industry," "clothing trade," "computer industry," or "automobile industry and trade" can be used by selecting the Subject heading search type. The term "competition" is the subject heading that encompasses the concept of "competitiveness": e.g., Competition, International. Doing a Subject heading search for "Globalization" will produce a very useful list of subheadings, like "economic aspects" or "social aspects," and regions. For example: