Power and governance in global value chains: upgrading of Pakistani mobile application vendors in an era of platforms

Abstract This study integrates Gereffi et al.’s governance framework with Dallas et al.’s power typology to explain the functional upgrading of low-capability suppliers under increasing industry complexity. We argue that governance alone cannot account for upgrading in platform-mediated global value chains, without accounting for how institutional and constitutive power interact. By examining Pakistani mobile application vendors in Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android ecosystems, we demonstrate that while platform codification facilitates initial learning, it does not by itself lead to functional upgrading. Instead, upgrading depends on both platform codification and suppliers’ ability to gain legitimacy, enabling shifts from captive to modular governance.