Competitiveness agreements of regional value chains (VC): an alternative to deal with the effects of economic restructuring in Colombia

During the 1990s, the devastating outcomes of the economic restructuring on several regions and key sectors such as the agriculture and livestock prompted countries such as Colombia to undertake an aggressive program of value chain-based development policies and partnerships including its decentralization to the regions. The agreement on competitiveness of several value chains at the regional level became a proactive response at the meso-level to the new challenges that firms and nations faced in the context of globalization. The research aims to analyse the process effectiveness of the decentralized implementation of the Colombian national competitiveness policy during the period 1996-2010. The theoretical framework is based on institutional theory. The study expands and disaggregates Gereffi’s Global Commodity Chain framework and applies some of its analytical categories (input output structure and governance amongst others) to the study of regional value chains