Supplier-Buyer Collaboration Versus Productivity

Firms that upgrade and then maintain supply-demand matching collaboration with a highly-governed commercial chain, like a Global Value Chain (GVC), are thought to obtain better opportunities for improving their business prospects. This paper reviews a study on such a hypothetical impact by using data from the fish value chain of Seychelles, comprising a few small-scale producers that have upgraded to supply foreign markets. The difference in the mean value of 5 months’ of production capacity, actual output and productivity (as total output value/input value) of random fish suppliers that had upgraded (n = 34) and not upgraded (n = 32) were tested. Four of the upgraded suppliers were subsequently interviewed on key production-related attributes. Only the difference in the mean productivity figures of the two groups of firms was not significant. The interviews suggest that (1) the productivity of upgraded suppliers is strongly impacted by their directly-controlled resources and exploited fish stocks and (2) viability challenges motivate upgraded suppliers to multi-chain and target various foreign and native customers. The results indicate that supply-demand collaboration in a highly-governed fish chain allows small-scale producers to improve their production capacity, associated output and their potential productivity too if it helps strengthen the environmental sustainability of their fish stocks.