This chapter examines the behaviour of various types of corporate actors, and their linkages, in the context of a fast-changing GVC. The restructuring of the TV industry around transnational production networks has created two types of companies (lead firms and suppliers), and two classes of suppliers (sector-specific and multisectoral). Using Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, the first section reflects on the impact of the digital revolution on lead firms and sector-specific suppliers. The second section focuses on the relationships between the different sets of actors and examines the modes of governance that prevail in the TV GVC. The thrust of corporate strategies, it argues, is strongly influenced by businesses’ positions in the GVC, and the power asymmetries between lead firms and suppliers are leading them to divergent approaches to integration. The final section demonstrates how the rise of the global suppliers (the tech giants) in the TV industry is furthering the global integration of the sector, and facilitating industry co-evolution through the formation of a supply base that is shared across several industries.

The chapter delves into the transnational dimension of the global TV system. Transnational media have evolved, and this chapter contends that a new generation has emerged. The first, which developed in the later part of the twentieth century, consists of cross-border TV networks and formats. The second is the rise of streaming platforms. During the first generation, the transnational remained a professional practice out of viewers reach. With the arrival of the second generation, the transnational has become an everyday mode of media consumption and interaction. The chapter’s second purpose is to examine the key organisational characteristics of the transnational media firm. It compares four types of organisational configuration (multinational, global, international, and transnational), and analyses the latter in depth. It connects organisational theory to the GVC framework, demonstrating how the nature of a firm’s activities and position in the value chain play a determining role in the type of organisational structure it is most likely to adopt.

With a case study of the mobile phone industry, this chapter investigates how competition and collaboration among East Asian firms with different backgrounds and business models have created the industry’s dynamics, turning it into the home of major smartphone assemblers, brand firms, and key component vendors. It also explores value chain resilience of the international economy shaped around global supply chains, even if the networks have been gradually disrupted since 2018 due to the escalating US-China high-tech confrontation. In this chapter, China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan are mapped in the global landscape of the smartphone industry and changes in mobile phone production over the last ten years are elucidated in terms of production site and firm nationality. Historical contexts of the electronics industry in each country that produced a variety of business models and allocated different value chain positions to individual firms are then investigated. The discussion concludes by highlighting different competitive advantages of firms from Korea, Taiwan, and China that have contributed to East Asia’s emergence as the world’s hub of the smartphone industry.