Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion De-Globalisation and Decoupling: Post-COVID-19 Myths versus Realities Peter Williamson University of Cambridge, UK It has become fashionable to argue that the post-coronavirus world will see an acceleration in de-globalisation and decoupling and that companies will substan- tively re-localise their supply chains (Javorcik, 2020; McKinsey, 2020). The World Economic Forum recommended that companies should ‘aggressively evalu- ate near-shore options to shorten supply chains’ (World Economic Forum, 2020). This commentary argues that such predictions grossly exaggerate the extent to which such restructuring will happen in practice. Even more importantly, assum- ing that one of the main impacts of the pandemic will be to trigger de-globalisation, decoupling, and re-shoring in the aftermath is dangerous because it muddies the waters, obscuring a much more fundamental consequence: rapidly rising flows of data and knowledge around the world. This shift will have far-reaching implica- tions that researchers, executives, and policymakers need to understand and then address. EVIDENCE TO DATE Let us begin with the data that are starting to come through about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on globalisation and global value chains (GVCs). In April 2020, the World Trade Organization forecast that world trade would decline by up to 32 percent in 2020, much more than the expected fall in world GDP (World Trade Organization, 2020a). By October 2020, their forecasts of falling trade were sharply cut back to a 9.2% decline in the volume of world merchandise trade for 2020, followed by a 7.2% rise in 2021 (World Trade Organization, 2020b). Spot-market rates for sending a container to America’s West Coast, mean- while, were up 127% year on year (The Economist, 2020). The fact that trade volumes fell much less than expected and then began to rebound quickly reflects the fact that the globally interconnected economy helped in dealing with the corona epidemic. Vital raw materials, such as testing Management and Organization Review 17:1, February 2021, 29–34 doi: 10.1017/mor.2020.80 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The International Association for Chinese Management Research at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2020.80 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 207.241.231.83, on 15 Jul 2021 at 18:31:13, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available