Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards?: Lessons from Nike

Locke, Richard M.; Qin, Fei; Brause, Alberto

doi:10.2139/ssrn.916771

Cited by 83 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Companies are using codes as a marketing device [66], and the lack of workers' participation in code compliance programs advertisements for a company, which may use them as a tool to merely mitigating external risks (e.g., negative media pressures), rather than supporting workers' interests [73]. Further critics support that codes of conduct are weakening governmental and union intervention and do not improve labor conditions, but rather are used for public relations [69,71,79,97]. Lastly a complex supply chain will hinder a successful SSCM adoption.…”

Section: Barriersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Accordingly, two possibilities of compliance relationships can be distinguished. The first one is a commitment relationship with their suppliers and the second is a compliance relationship, which is obviously the more inadvisable and distrustful type [72,86,93,97]. Table 2 depicts the dominant results of the coding process.…”

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, it is not surprising that many papers mentioned during the supplier collaboration topic above are also dealing with, or at least mentioning, supplier evaluation practices, which play a crucial role in ensuring positive labor-oriented outcomes [13,65,66,89]. Once a company introduces codes to its suppliers, the expected positive impact needs to be monitored, evaluated, and, if necessary, corrected by the focal companies, and 20 papers discuss this [94,97] (Table 3). Locke, Qin, et al [97] analyzed the corporate audit of Nike and found that variations in working conditions can be the result of country effects, factory characteristics, and the relationship between Nike and its suppliers.…”

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Once a company introduces codes to its suppliers, the expected positive impact needs to be monitored, evaluated, and, if necessary, corrected by the focal companies, and 20 papers discuss this [94,97] (Table 3). Locke, Qin, et al [97] analyzed the corporate audit of Nike and found that variations in working conditions can be the result of country effects, factory characteristics, and the relationship between Nike and its suppliers. Consequently, while some suppliers are compliant with Nike's code of conduct, others face problems with wages, working hours, and health and safety.…”

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Social Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry—A Literature Review

et al. 2017

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So far, a vast amount of studies on sustainability in supply chain management have been conducted by academics over the last decade. Nevertheless, socially related aspects are still neglected in the related discussion. The primary motivation of the present literature review has arisen from this shortcoming, thus the key purpose of this study is to enrich the discussion by providing a state-of-the-art, focusing exclusively on social issues in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) by considering the textile/apparel sector as the field of application. The authors conduct a literature review, including content analysis which covers 45 articles published in English peer-reviewed journals, and proposes a comprehensive map which integrates the latest findings on socially related practices in the textile/apparel industry with the dominant conceptualization in order to reveal potential research areas in the field. The results show an ongoing lack of investigation regarding the social dimension of the triple bottom line in SSCM. Findings indicate that a company's internal orientation is the main assisting factor in sustainable supply chain management practices. Further, supplier collaboration and assessment can be interpreted as an offer for suppliers deriving from stakeholders and a focal company's management of social risk. Nevertheless, suppliers do also face or even create huge barriers in improving their social performance. This calls for more empirical research and qualitative or quantitative survey methods, especially at the supplier level located in developing countries.

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Section: Barriersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Management Of Social Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Social Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry—A Literature Review

et al. 2017

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“…Common pool resources, on the other hand, require firms to collaborate to protect a shared resource such as the industry's reputation, access to physical assets or supply chain resilience (Prakash and Potoski 2006;Barnett and King 2008). Strategic perspectives emphasize that ISR schemes are often led by dominant firms that have the greatest interest in addressing the problem as with Nike or Walmart's leadership in collective efforts to eliminate sweatshop labour from supply chains (O'Rourke 2003; Locke et al 2007). …”

Section: Strategic Management Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marking Their Own Homework: The Pragmatic and Moral Legitimacy of Industry Self-Regulation

Bowen

2017

J Bus Ethics

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When is industry self-regulation (ISR) a legitimate form of governance? In principle, ISR can serve the interests of participating companies, regulators and other stakeholders. However, in practice, empirical evidence shows that ISR schemes often under-perform, leading to criticism that such schemes are tantamount to firms marking their own homework. In response, this paper explains how current management theory on ISR has failed to separate the pragmatic legitimacy of ISR based on selfinterested calculations, from moral legitimacy based on normative approval. The paper traces three families of management theory on ISR and uses these to map the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes. It identifies tensions between the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes, which the current ISR literature does not address, and draws implications for the future theory and practice of ISR.

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Public–private partnership in labor standards governance: Better factories Cambodia

Wetterberg¹

2011

Public Admin & Development

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The growth of outsourcing in apparel manufacturing has raised concerns about increasingly exploitative working conditions. Given the failure of existing enforcement mechanisms, we need to look to alternate institutional structures to address the global challenge of declining labor standards. This paper examines the case of Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a public–private partnership (PPP) that has effectively protected workers' rights through collaboration between the Government of Cambodia, the International Labour Organization, and multi‐national apparel firms. Prior to the BFC, none of these actors was able to independently draw up and enforce stronger standards through effective monitoring. In collaboration, however, this mix of private, state, and inter‐governmental organizations have been able to achieve the twin goals of stronger labor protections and effective enforcement by building on each partner's distinct organizational strengths. While this case may have broader relevance, its successes are tempered by dependence on a single industry and on buyers' preferences for inspected production sites. Further, similar partnerships may not emerge without strong state intervention to demonstrate their positive outcomes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards?: Lessons from Nike

Cited by 83 publications

References 13 publications

Social Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry—A Literature Review

Social Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry—A Literature Review

Marking Their Own Homework: The Pragmatic and Moral Legitimacy of Industry Self-Regulation

Public–private partnership in labor standards governance: Better factories Cambodia

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