McCormick+Schmitz Handbook for value chain research on - PACA

the designs in the various stages? Is the design controlled by the retailers or producers?
Where the design is produced locally where do the ideas come from? Answering these
questions and displaying the answers in effective diagrams can be important. Especially
if the <strong>research</strong> explores the possibility of re-positioning local producers in the national or
global economy, then it is paramount to understand the design stage. Thus, depending on
the specific purpose of the <strong>research</strong>, different sub-maps become necessary. Such
“zooming in” on particular parts of the <strong>chain</strong> is often an important complement of the
overall <strong>value</strong> <strong>chain</strong> map. Chapter 10 will give examples of maps which detail particular
stages. In the next chapter 9, we will show how to refine the overall map.
9. Refining the <strong>value</strong> <strong>chain</strong> map
The previous chapter showed how to get an initial grasp of how local producers fit into
the relevant global and national <strong>chain</strong>s. This chapter is concerned with making the map
more precise; precise, not in the sense of documenting the <strong>chain</strong> in all its details.
Precision refers here to quantifying the key variables as much as possible, distinguishing
between different kinds of relationships, substantiating in the text what the numbers and
arrows in the map mean, and indicating where qualifications are necessary.
9.1 Mapping gives power
The refined map can be understood as a framework <strong>for</strong> showing the <strong>chain</strong> statistics.
These statistics can refer to the number of enterprises in different activities, number of
workers, the percentage of female workers, earnings, and many other aspects depending
on the <strong>research</strong> questions you want to answer. Indeed be<strong>for</strong>e starting to refine the map, go
back to your initial <strong>research</strong> questions, first to remind yourself what you were trying to
find out when you started this work, second to see whether the initial question needs to be
modified or refined. Skipping this step is extremely expensive. If your initial question
was too general and you fail to make it more specific, you drift into a much bigger data
collection exercise than needed.
Conventionally, data are presented in tables or diagrams. Much of those conventional
data are also needed <strong>for</strong> our exercise. The critical difference is that we enter the data into
our map. Employment data becomes so much more meaningful if we see how many
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