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Do Economic Problems at Home Undermine Worker Safety Abroad?: A Panel Study, 1980–2009
... Although trade openness can reduce the worst forms of work such as child labour and forced labour (Neumayer & De Soysa, 2005;Neumayer & De Soysa, 2007), it does not always lead to an improvement in working conditions or a reduction of undesirable social impacts (Davies & Voy, 2009;Doytch et al., 2014;Mosley & Uno, 2007). It has been proven that there is a net flow of bad labour conditions from developing to developed regions due to the production of internationally traded goods (Alsamawi et al., 2017a;Lim & Prakash, 2017;Simas et al., 2014;Xiao et al., 2017). ...
Multinational corporations (MNEs) have been at the forefront of the geographical disintegration of production chains in search of lower salaries, among other reasons, which led to a global race to the bottom in labour standards. Therefore, significant amounts of indecent work are currently embodied in MNEs' global value chains, compromising not only the brands' corporative image but also the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. In this work, we shed light on this matter by estimating the indecent-work-conditions related impacts linked to the foreign activities of MNEs from the United States. Using a socially extended MRIO model that integrates three social indicators (forced labour, fatal and nonfatal occupational injuries), we found that these activities show increasing trends between 2009 and 2013 on indecent labour, contributing with 1.1%-1.3% of the global cases. United States affiliates located in India, China and Brazil, show the highest ratios per unit of value-added.
... Yet apparel production also creates incentives for factory owners and managers to ignore safety and structural problems and limit compensation to a bare minimum (Barrientos et al. 2011;Bartley et al. 2015;Berliner et al. 2015b;Locke 2013). When a surplus of low-skilled workers exists (Rudra 2002;Milner and Rudra 2015), or when economic downturns lead to reduced demand in key consumer markets (Lim and Prakash 2017), the consequences for workers may be even more severe. These perils often are exacerbated by the domestic political situations in apparel-producing countries (Adolph et al. 2017;Mosley 2011). ...
Most research on private governance examines the design and negotiation of particular initiatives or their operation and effectiveness once established, with relatively little work on why firms join in the first place. We contribute to this literature by exploring firms’ willingness to participate in two recent, high-profile private initiatives established in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza disaster in the Bangladesh ready-made garment (RMG) sector: the Accord on Building and Fire Safety and the Alliance for Worker Safety in Bangladesh. Using novel shipment-level data from U.S. customs declarations, we generate a set of firms that were “eligible” to join these remediation initiatives. We are able to positively attribute only a minority of US RMG imports from Bangladesh to Accord and Alliance signatories. Firms with consumer-facing brands, publicly-traded firms, and those importing more RMG product from Bangladesh were more likely to sign up for the Accord and Alliance. Firms headquartered in the USA were much less likely to sign onto remediation plans, especially the Accord.
... We use data from Mosley (2011): the dataset provides information on policies protecting workers' rights and violations of such policies. Lim and Prakash (2017) demonstrate that stronger workers' rights tend to mitigate the adverse impact of economic shocks on worker safety. Therefore, any weakening in governments' efforts to protect workers' rights should be detrimental to safety during economic downturns. ...
Sanctions restrict or terminate economic relations between two or more countries, directly and negatively influencing sanctioned countries’ companies. We argue that sanctions are similar to recessions—both reduce economic activity in affected countries. Less economic activity results in a lower accident risk as companies use their productive facilities less. Reduced revenues also force companies to adjust by cutting costs, which includes spending on safety. Hence, accident damage should increase under sanctions. Governments can intervene by enforcing safety regulations, and their incentives to do so are stronger in democracies, where citizens can more easily remove politicians from office. Therefore, accident damage increases only in nondemocratic countries, while democracies succeed in maintaining technological safety and hence sanctions do not affect accident damage.
The “Belt and Road” Initiative creates great opportunities open to Chinese International Construction Enterprises (ICEs). Compared with domestic projects, foreign projects are facing complicated external environment. The personal safety of engineers threatened by terrorism, contagious disease, kidnap, etc. The probability of personal safety risk also increases dramatically. Africa, as one of the regions with most frequent foreign economic and trade exchanges in China, has signed a great number of construction projects with ICEs. Every year millions of engineers and labors heading for Africa. However, the serious condition of frequent accident in labor personnel safety needs close attention as construction industry has been universally regarded as one of the most dangerous industries in the world. Therefore, this paper identified the personnel security risks faced by ICEs staff in Africa to illuminating the importance and urgency of overseas labor safety issues. Mixed methods are utilized to analysis risk events and risk factors. Finally, this paper identified three risk events(armed conflict event, criminal crime event, disease and accidental injury event) from case study and 36 risk factors are from politics, economy, society and culture, natural environment, contractor enterprises and engineering personnel themselves.
Introduction: Fall from height is one of the main causes of death in the construction workers. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and prioritize of factors affecting falls from height accidents in construction industry.
Material and method: A descriptive-analytical study was conducted on five constructional projects in South Pars industrial region, in Iran. All of the reported events from 2011 to 2015 years were investigated and 74 out of 377 occupational accidents were considered as falls from height accidents. The identified factors and sub-factors were divided into 3 main factors including individual, organizational and environmental factors and 14 sub-factors based on the experts' opinion. Then, AHP method was used to determine and prioritize of the factors and sub-factors.
Results: The results of hierarchical analysis of fall from height accidents causes showed that environmental, individual, and organizational factors with weights of 0.359, 0.351, and 0.290 were in the first, second, third priorities, respectively. Also, among all examined sub-factors, work platform elevation, mental/occupational stresses and safety culture were the highest priority, respectively.
Conclusion: Paying attention to strategies that enhance the safety culture of employees and reduce their occupational stress levels in the workplace can be very effective in preventing of fall from height accidents.
Keywords: Construction projects; Hierarchical analysis; Fall from height; Accident management.
The 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse was the worst industrial accident in the history of the apparel industry. The tragedy occurred in the context of decades of sometimes violent industrial relations in Bangladesh. The policy response included a change in Bangladeshi labor law, international buyer-coordinated building inspections, tariff penalties, and attempts at improved social dialogue coordinated by international buyers, unions, the Bangladeshi government, and the International Labour Organization (ILO). Analyses based on historiography, statistical analysis of World Bank Enterprise Surveys, and semi-structured interviews indicate that there was a structural break in industrial relations as a consequence of the tragedy at Rana Plaza and subsequent policy reform. The initial response by factory managers reflected the historical tension between labor and management in Bangladesh. The subsequent policies increased receptivity to compliance with safety inspections and technical labor standards. However, resistance remains to the protection of foundational labor rights.
This study tests the hypothesis that lean manufacturing improves the social performance of manufacturers in emerging markets. We analyze an intervention by Nike, Inc., to promote the adoption of lean manufacturing in its apparel supply chain across 11 developing countries. Using difference-in-differences estimates from a panel of more than 300 factories, we find that lean adoption was associated with a 15 percentage point reduction in noncompliance with labor standards that primarily reflect factory wage and work hour practices. However, we find a null effect on factory health and safety standards. This pattern is consistent with a causal mechanism that links lean to improved social performance through changes in labor relations, rather than improved management systems. These findings offer evidence that capability-building interventions may reduce social harm in global supply chains.
Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2015.2369 .
This paper was accepted by Bruno Cassiman, business strategy.
Global labour governance has typically been approached from either industrial relations scholars focusing on the role of organised labour or social movement scholars focusing on the role of social movement organisations in mobilising consumption power. Yet, little work has focused on the interaction of the two. Using an exploratory case study of the governance response to the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, this article examines how complementary capacities of production and consumption- based actors generated coalitional power, and contributed to creating the “Accord for Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh”, making it binding and convincing more than 180 brand-name companies to sign up. The research has implications for understanding how the interface between production and consumption actors may provide leverage to improve labour standards in global supply chains.
Global brands remain under increasing pressure to ensure labor standards and codes of conduct are met by their suppliers. Little is known about how this is addressed by lower tier suppliers. We investigate whether, and how, occupational health and safety standards permeate down the computer industry value chain. We compare first and second tier suppliers' engagement with a private voluntary industry code, the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct, and the publicly regulated European Union Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances. We find the industry code absent at the lower tier, yet second tier suppliers do implement the European Union Directive. This is achieved without support from public agencies or global value chain linkages. Our findings question the emphasis placed on chain governance in studies of labor compliance in global value chains, and suggest that alternative and complementary approaches may be required for effective labor compliance throughout the value chain.
In constrained economic times, organizations can either withdraw their socially responsible activities or maintain — even expand — them to meet heightened stakeholder needs. The 2008–2009 global recession offers a natural experiment through which to understand corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a tight economy. In this paper, we suggest that tactical, rather than strategic, forms of CSR will more likely be withdrawn. Tactical CSR comprises transactional activities with short time horizons and relatively few organizational resources. Strategic CSR comprises activities with long time horizons, large resource commitments and significant structural adjustments. We argue that firms will withdraw both tactical and strategic CSR during a recession due to severe resource scarcity and heightened uncertainty in the macro economy. Strategic CSR, however, would more likely endure through a recession than tactical CSR, since strategic CSR activities are often routinized. Although strong corporate financial performance (CFP) can counteract the negative impact of a recession, we argue that this tempering effect will be stronger for strategic CSR than tactical. We find support for these hypotheses, drawing data from 1,666 U.S. companies for the period between 2003 and 2009.
Purpose
– This paper seeks to examine the various actors responsible for the recent tragedy at a clothing factory in Bangladesh. Rather than focusing on the actual factory owner, it evaluates the broader structural and institutional factors, plus a particular Western retailer strategy of fast fashion, that together explain the practical inevitability of such tragedies.
Design/methodology/approach
– As a case study of a particular incident, it presents data from newspaper accounts and descriptive statistics to evaluate the broader context of an industrial accident.
Findings
– By examining the full context of the incident, it becomes apparent that there were systemic issues that effectively encouraged many parties to engage in workplace policies that almost inevitably can lead to accidents or at least labor abuses. Finally, blame is apportioned to Western consumers whose insatiable appetite for “fashionable” goods merely feeds a retail system that was set up to resolve earlier supply chain problems and ended up taking advantage of changing international trade regimes.
Originality/value
– The paper takes a much broader examination and analysis of institutional factors that shape work conditions than studies that focus merely on labor-management issues.
This article analyses the widely reported increase of unfree labour in Africa through neoliberalism, arguing that, far from an individual relationship of domination epiphenomenal to global political-economic restructuring, unfree labour must be understood as a social relationship of insecurity and exploitation whose acceleration in recent decades is traceable to broader shifts in the relations of production and social reproduction. These include the impact of labour market reform and privatisation on wages, employment and poverty; the rise of informalisation, including the marketisation of social reproduction; Africa in the international division of labour and labour conditions in global supply chains; and the rise of brics, the ‘new scramble’ for African resources and markets, and intensified processes of primitive accumulation. In a continent beleaguered by the slave trade and the systematic, widespread and brutal exploitation of forced labour during the colonial era, concerns around labour conditions of violence, bondage and coercion are particularly acute. Understanding the complexities of labour unfreedom in Africa today requires an understanding of the various forms and layers of coercion, immobility and exploitation fundamental to the contemporary social structures of capitalist accumulation, overcoming the binary typically posited between free and unfree labour.
This article explores the impact of economic globalization on workers' rights in developing countries. The authors hypothesize that the impact of globalization on labor rights depends not only on the overall level of economic openness but also on the precise ways in which a country participates in global production networks. Using a new data set on collective labor rights, the authors test these expectations. Their analysis of the correlates of labor rights in 90 developing nations, from 1986 to 2002, highlights globalization's mixed impact on labor rights. As “climb to the top” accounts suggest, foreign direct investment inflows are positively and significantly related to the rights of workers. But at the same time, trade competition generates downward “race to the bottom” pressures on collective labor rights. The authors also find that domestic institutions and labor rights in neighboring countries are important correlates of workers' rights.
Stakeholder theory has been a popular heuristic for describing the management environment for years, but it has not attained full theoretical status. Our aim in this article is to contribute to a theory of stakeholder identification and salience based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. By combining these attributes, we generate a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their salience to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.
Marketing ethics and social responsibility are inherently controversial, and years of research continue to present conflicts and challenges for marketers on the value of a socially responsible approach to marketing activities. This article examines whether or not consumers care about ethical behaviour, and investigates the effect of good and bad ethical conduct on consumer purchase behaviour. Through focus group discussions it becomes clear that although we are more sophisticated as consumers today, this does not necessarily translate into behaviour which favours ethical companies and punishes unethical firms. The article concludes by some thoughts on how marketers might encourage consumers to engage in positive purchase behaviour in favour of ethical marketing.
This article investigates the nature of the linkages between trade and labor rights in developing countries. Specifically, we hypothesize that a “California effect” serves to transmit superior labor standards from importing to exporting countries, in a manner similar to the transmission of environmental standards. We maintain that, all else being equal, the labor standards of a given country are influenced not by its overall level of trade openness, but by the labor standards of its trading partners. We evaluate our hypothesis using a panel of 90 developing countries over the period 1986–2002, and we separately examine the extent to which the labor laws and the actual labor practices of the countries are influenced by those of their export destinations. We find that strong legal protections of collective labor rights in a country's export destinations are associated with more stringent labor laws in the exporting country. This California effect finding is, however, weaker in the context of labor rights practices, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between formal legislation and actual implementation of labor rights.
Thirty years have passed since Pfeffer and Salancik’s seminal work on resource dependence theory (RDT). During this time RDT has been applied broadly across the research domain to explain how organizations reduce environmental interdependence and uncertainty. In this review, the authors assess the conceptual development, empirical research, and application of RDT. They structure their review around the five options that Pfeffer and Salancik propose firms can enact to minimize environmental dependences: (a) mergers/vertical integration, (b) joint ventures and other interorganizational relationships, (c) boards of directors, (d) political action, and (e) executive succession.The authors summarize past work, synthesize contemporary thought, and propose future research directions.
What is the effect of trade on a country's environment, for a given level of GDP? Some have observed an apparent positive correlation between openness to trade and measures of environmental quality. But this could be due to endogeneity of trade, rather than causality. This paper uses exogenous determinants of trade geographical variables from the gravity model as instruments to isolate the effect of openness. The finding is that trade may indeed have a beneficial effect on three measures of air pollution. Statistical significance is lacking for Particulate Matter, but is moderate for NO2, and high for SO2. Results for broader environmental measures are not as encouraging, but one can at least say that there is little evidence that trade has the detrimental effect on the environment that the race-to-the-bottom theory would lead one to expect. The larger effect appears to come via income itself: our results generally support the environmental Kuznets curve, which says that growth harms the environment at low levels of income and helps at high levels, and to support the proposition that openness to trade accelerates the growth process.
We address the question of how and why corporate social responsibility (CSR) differs among countries and how and why it changes. Applying two schools of thought in institutional theory we conceptualize, first, the differences between CSR in the USA and Europe and, second, the recent rise of CSR in Europe. We also delineate the potential of our framework for application to other parts of the global economy.
Online: www.correlatesofwar.org
We investigate how U.S. companies adjusted their investments in key strategic resources ― i.e., human capital, tangible, and intangible resources ― during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. To obtain exogenous variation in the severity of the recession, we exploit the differential intensity of the house price collapse across U.S. regions, instrumenting changes in house prices with Saiz’ (2010) topological measure of housing supply elasticity. Our findings indicate that companies significantly laid off employees and curtailed capital expenditures. Importantly though, they did not reduce investments in R&D and corporate social responsibility (CSR). We further document that firms that sustained their R&D and CSR performed better once the economy recovered. These findings confirm our theoretical arguments suggesting that intangible strategic resources such as innovation capability and stakeholder relations are instrumental in sustaining a competitive advantage during (and beyond) times of crisis.
Workplace accidents are an important economic phenomenon. Yet, the pro-cyclical fl uctuations in workplace accidents are not well understood. They could be related to fluctuations in effort and working hours, but workplace accidents may also be affected by reporting behavior. Our paper uses unique data on workplace accidents from an Austrian matched worker-firm dataset to study in detail how economic incentives affect workplace accidents. We find that workers who reported an accident in a particular period of time are more likely to be tired later on. And, we find support for the idea that recessions in fluence the reporting of moderate workplace accidents: if workers think the probability of dismissals at the firm level is high, they are less likely to report a moderate workplace accident.
Research on global programs to regulate labor standards has emphasized interactions between transnational and state regulatory institutions. If transnational initiatives can make state institutions more relevant, they have the potential to reinforce, rather than displace, state labor regulation. Through a study of the Indonesia-based program of a leading initiative to improve working conditions in the garment industry, Better Work, this article identifies the conditions under which transnational regulations reinforce domestic ones. Drawing on two case studies comparing regulations governing fixed-term contracts and minimum wage renegotiations in four Indonesian districts, the authors find that reinforcement is likely when two conditions jointly occur: unions mobilize to activate state institutions, and transnational regulators have support to resolve ambiguities in formal rules in ways that require firms to engage with constraining institutions. The authors further test the findings through a quantitative analysis of factory participation in state-supervised wage renegotiations. The findings reveal opportunities and constraints to designing global programs that can both improve factory-level standards and support the functioning of state labor market institutions.
Labor Rights and Multinational Production investigates the relationship between workers’ rights and multinational production. Mosley argues that some types of multinational production, embodied in directly owned foreign investment, positively affect labor rights. But other types of international production, particularly subcontracting, can engender competitive races to the bottom in labor rights. To test these claims, Mosley presents newly generated measures of collective labor rights, covering a wide range of low- and middle-income nations for the 1985–2002 period. This book suggests that the consequences of economic openness for developing countries are highly dependent on foreign firms’ modes of entry and, more generally, on the precise way in which each developing country engages the global economy. The book contributes to academic literature in comparative and international political economy, and to public policy debates regarding the effects of globalization.
This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports, and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP, and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages, and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.
Research over the past decade has made considerable progress toward achieving a holistic understanding of the myriad actors, interests, and relationships shaping labor rights in global supply chains, but numerous obstacles remain to building a more cumulative research program. In this essay we outline two major challenges and several fruitful directions forward. First, we review the different outcomes of interest in research on labor rights and highlight several tensions that lead to difficulty comparing findings across studies, inappropriate data choices, and unexamined causal assumptions. Second, we highlight a failure to adequately integrate the findings of research in two different subliteratures, one focusing on the incentives of states and firms to adopt reforms, and a second focusing on the implementation of those reforms with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. We conclude by highlighting the important questions raised by a clearer integration of these two literatures and identifying several recent studies that begin to answer them.
Poor working conditions in global supply chains have led to private initiatives that seek to regulate labor practices in developing countries. But how effective are these regulatory programs? We investigate the effects of transnational private regulation by studying Hewlett-Packard's (HP) supplier responsibility program. Using analysis of factory audits, interviews with buyer and supplier management, and field research at production facilities across seven countries, we find that national context – not repeated audits, capability building, or supply chain power – is the key predictor of workplace compliance. Quantitative analysis shows that factories in China are markedly less compliant than those in countries with stronger civil society and regulatory institutions. Comparative field research then illustrates how these local institutions complement transnational private regulation. Although these findings imply limits to private regulation in institutionally poor settings, they also highlight opportunities for productive linkages between transnational actors and local state and society.
Stakeholder theory has been a popular heuristic for describing the management environment for years, but it has not attained full theoretical status. Our aim in this article is to contribute to a theory of stakeholder identification and salience based on stakeholders possessing one or more of three relationship attributes: power, legitimacy, and urgency. By combining these attributes, we generate a typology of stakeholders, propositions concerning their salience to managers of the firm, and research and management implications.
For much of the twentieth century, large companies employing many workers formed the bedrock of the U.S. economy. Today, on the list of big business's priorities, sustaining the employer-worker relationship ranks far below building a devoted customer base and delivering value to investors. As David Weil's groundbreaking analysis shows, large corporations have shed their role as direct employers of the people responsible for their products, in favor of outsourcing work to small companies that compete fiercely with one another. The result has been declining wages, eroding benefits, inadequate health and safety conditions, and ever-widening income inequality.From the perspectives of CEOs and investors, fissuring--splitting off functions that were once managed internally--has been a phenomenally successful business strategy, allowing companies to become more streamlined and drive down costs. Despite giving up direct control to subcontractors, vendors, and franchises, these large companies have figured out how to maintain quality standards and protect the reputation of the brand. They produce brand-name products and services without the cost of maintaining an expensive workforce. But from the perspective of workers, this lucrative strategy has meant stagnation in wages and benefits and a lower standard of living--if they are fortunate enough to have a job at all.Weil proposes ways to modernize regulatory policies and laws so that employers can meet their obligations to workers while allowing companies to keep the beneficial aspects of this innovative business strategy.
What does it mean when consumers “shop with a conscience” and choose products labeled as fair or sustainable? Does this translate into meaningful changes in global production processes? To what extent are voluntary standards implemented and enforced, and can they really govern global industries? Looking behind the Label presents an informative introduction to global production and ethical consumption, tracing the links between consumers' choices and the practices of multinational producers and retailers. Case studies of several types of products—wood and paper, food, apparel and footwear, and electronics—are used to reveal what lies behind voluntary rules and to critique predominant assumptions about ethical consumption as a form of political expression.
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=807541
Excerpt: http://www.scribd.com/doc/261877482/Looking-behind-the-Label-excerpt
More information: https://sites.google.com/site/tbsoc2/looking-behind-the-label
fields. of Volume 33, Issue 2, Summer 2002, Pages 231-243, programs. of 9 (1977), pp. 168–178.
The conventional wisdom is that U.S. multinationals exploit foreign workers, but the glare of 1990s publicity is driving many firms to export human rights.
Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs – such as certification regimes and codes of conduct – that diffuse global standards. However, little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large-scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the International Labour Organization treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. These findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.
Interdisciplinary literature on global commodity chains (GCCs)/global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs) contends that inter-firm power differentials within globally networked forms of economic organization have implications for the developmental trajectories of nation-states. In this article, I advance these literatures in three ways. First, I bridge the two approaches by elaborating an exchange-theoretic conceptualization of inter-firm power that is latent in the two literatures. This conceptualization focuses narrowly on the determinants of inter-firm power asymmetries and is useful for explaining why actual production networks vary in terms of the relative power of buyers and producers. Second, I develop an empirical framework to advance basic research on the link between globally networked forms of economic organization and national economic development. In particular, I derive cross-nationally and temporally comparable country-level measurements of the average bargaining power of a country's resident firms using industry-specific international exchange (trade) networks. I demonstrate the validity of these indices through a historical analysis of trade networks in the transport equipment and garment industries and by analysing cross-national variations in wages in the two industries. Finally, I conclude by charting a parallel path for GCC/GVC and GPN research that implicates global models of network organization in macro-comparative analyses of economic development.
This paper compares and contrasts two prominent and seemingly antagonistic safety management rubrics: the behavior change and culture change approaches to safety. The two perspectives are analyzed in terms of their conceptual and theoretical foundations, defining characteristics, and apparent strengths and weaknesses. The level of empirical support for each approach is also assessed. The argument is advanced that the two approaches are essentially complementary and that their respective strengths can be merged into a more balanced and comprehensive approach for managing workplace safety. This integrated approach has two key features: (1) a data-based and participatory problem-solving process that emulates some of the inherent strengths of behavior change technology, and (2) a more explicit culture change process that can be systematically monitored and assessed.
Global supply chains (GSCs) are transforming the world. This paper explores why they emerged, why they are significant and future directions they are likely to take along with some implications for policy. After putting global supply chains into an historical perspective, the paper presents an economic framework for understanding the functional and geographical unbundling of production. The fundamental trade off in supply chain fractionalisation is between specialisation gains and coordination costs. The key trade-off in supply chain dispersion is between dispersion and agglomeration forces. Supply-chain trade should be not viewed as standard trade in parts and components rather than final goods. Production sharing has linked cross-border flows of goods, investment, services, know-how and people in novel ways. The paper suggest that future of global supply chains will be influenced by: 1) improvements in coordination technology that lowers the cost of functional and geographical unbundling, 2) improvements in computer integrated manufacturing that lowers the benefits of specialisation and shifts stages toward greater skill-, capital, and technology-intensity, 3) narrowing of wage gaps that reduces the benefit of North-South offshoring to nations like China, and 4) the price of oil that raises the cost of unbundling.
Monitoring systems have recently arisen to verify compliance with corporate codes of conduct for labor. This article places codes in the context of broader debates on global governance and argues for an empowered participatory approach to international labor standards focusing on enabling rights. Based on ethnographic research in Mexico and Guatemala on the implementation of codes in the apparel sector and their use in cross-border organizing campaigns, it explores the effect of monitoring on worker empowerment and working conditions in global factories. The analysis highlights institutional designs and political strategies capable of contributing to the protection of international labor rights.
Abstract In Bangladesh, women’s employment in export-orient ed industry has narrowed,the gender gap in many spheres including participation in labor force, social prestige, control over income and decision making. At the same,time,there is widespread,occupational,segregation,and,gender
In UK industry, particularly in the energy sector, there has been a movement away from ‘lagging’ measures of safety based on retrospective data, such as lost time accidents and incidents, towards ‘leading’ or predictive assessments of the safety climate of the organisation or worksite. A number of different instruments have been developed by industrial psychologists for this purpose, resulting in a proliferation of scales with distinct developmental histories. Reviewing the methods and results from a sample of industrial surveys, the thematic basis of 18 scales used to assess safety climate is examined. This suggests that the most typically assessed dimensions relate to management (72% of studies), the safety system (67%), and risk (67%), in addition themes relating to work pressure and competence appear in a third of the studies.
Using a novel extension of unequal exchange theory, this study analyzes how international trade affects per-capita incomes and employment patterns in affluent countries. The study begins by demonstrating that workers in less-developed countries are significantly underpaid relative to their labor productivity, and that this outcome causes the monetary values of goods exported from these countries to underestimate the actual amount of labor inputs embodied within them. From this observation, it is hypothesized that North–South trade, unlike North–North trade, should increase per-capita incomes in affluent countries, while also reducing employment in their manufacturing sectors. Using a simultaneous equations model, the study compares this theoretical expectation to the actual experiences of 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries between 1970 and 2003. The results are generally consistent with expectations. The study concludes by discussing the theoretical implications of these findings.
Third party labour contractors are increasingly prevalent in Global Production Networks (GPNs), and are a potential channel for ‘new forms of slavery’. Our review of case study evidence from South African and UK horticulture suggests unfree labour often emerges off - site through labour intermediaries. We examine analytical approaches to labour in GPNs and value chains. We argue that labour contracting is a logical extension of global outsourcing, helping to offset risk and enhance flexibility. A ‘cascade system’ allows unscrupulous intermediaries to exploit and coerce vulnerable workers. We examine strategies of civil society alliances, and regulatory reform, and argue for extending liability across global boundaries.
This article investigates the effects of an economic downturn on corporate social responsibility, with a focus on how UK food
and clothing retailers responded to recessionary pressures between 2008 and 2009 in their corporate strategies for ethical
trade. In contrast to the view that corporate ethical trading might contract in scale during recession, its (uneasy) resilience
is charted and explained by embeddedness in strategies of reputational risk management. However, the metaphor of refraction
is adopted to capture the changing directions of ethical trading strategy as retailers moved from a period of economic stability
to one of crisis.
Protesters now routinely fill the streets when any large, formal meeting dealing with international economic issues takes place. They express concern about the potential social and environmental costs of globalization and want negotiators to address these issues in trade agreements and international organizations. In addition, the debate over whether and how to link labor standards to trade has led to an impasse in American trade policy for much of the past decade and has tied the hands of US trade negotiators. Proposals to "let the market do it" or "let the International Labor Organization (ILO) do it" abound, but it is less common to find any serious analysis of just how activists can galvanize consumers to demand that corporations raise labor standards in their global operations or how the ILO can become more effective.In this study, Elliott and Freeman move beyond the debate on the relative merits and risks of a social clause in trade agreements and focus on practical approaches for improving labor standards in a more integrated global economy. The authors examine both what is being done in these areas and what more needs to be done to ensure that steady and tangible progress toward universal respect for core labor standards is made. While concluding that the ILO should have primary responsibility for labor standards, the book also suggests that the WTO should consider how to address egregious and willful violations of core labor standards if they are trade related.
This paper reviews the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) over recent years and highlights the prospects
for an increasingly strong connection with the practice of corporate social responsibility. The paper argues that not only
has SRI grown significantly, it has also matured. In particular, it has become an investment philosophy adopted by a growing
proportion of large investment institutions. This shift in SRI from margin to mainstream and the position in which institutional
investors find themselves is leading to a new form of SRI shareholder pressure. Although this bears some resemblance to lobbying
campaigns which might take advantage of shareholder rights, we seek to distinguish it as an important phenomenon in its own
right — one to which corporate executives are likely to be paying increasing attention in the years to come. We further argue
that this approach potentially meets some of the earlier ethical criticisms of certain forms of SRI but, ironically, probably
owes its existence to those pioneering approaches. We conclude with some suggestions for further research to inform discussion
of the issues highlighted in the paper.