Essays on Strategy, Institutions, and Multinationals in Global Supply Chains

This dissertation investigates two major themes: (1) the strategies that global firms use to overcome weak institutions in their outsourcing and (2) how local institutions affected how firms reconfigured their global supply chains in response to the financial crisis. All three papers use a unique dataset of international contract manufacturing orders that provides hitherto unavailable insight into the global supply chains of many of the world's largest brands in footwear, sportswear, and apparel.