1Down the Dusty Road: The Complexity of Supply Chains in the Age of Globalization
“…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”
—From “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost
It has already been a long day—rewarding, but exhausting—by the time we arrive for our last interview. As I get out of the car, my shirt sticks to my back with sweat, a result of the afternoon heat and humidity in this part of the Philippines. I'm in the Pampanga Province, an area northwest of Manila, outside a simple cinderblock home with a corrugated metal roof. I survey the landscape around me. Chickens saunter slowly across the dirt road, and I can hear a goat bleating from somewhere within the courtyard of the home I'm about to enter. Subsistence crops grow to one side; wildflowers grow on the other. My job has taken me on countless trips just like this one all around the world, and yet I take a moment to appreciate why I'm here. Within that courtyard, next to the noisy goat and perhaps a scurrying cat or two, sits one of the world's hundreds of millions of home‐based workers. The woman I am about to visit makes products that will wind up on the shelves of stores in the United States and across Europe before finding their way into the homes of consumers who may not even know she exists.
In the more than 10 years I have worked within and observed global supply chains, I've conducted hundreds of interviews like the ones we are doing today. ...