Multinational Enterprises, Employee Safety and the Socially Responsible Supply Chain: The Case of Bangladesh and the Apparel Industry

Abstract

This article address the issue of employee safety and the social responsibility of multinational apparel retailers who contract with Bangladesh manufacturers in their global supply chain. Both the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh have been identified as the two primary facilitators for global apparel industry efforts to actively address this serious human rights issue; thus, they have the potential to help drive the success of the industry's corporate citizenship efforts to successfully manage the issue of fire and building safety in Bangladesh. The article further explores these relationships within the context of the “global corporate citizenship” concept, and develops a rationale for the limits of a socially responsible supply chain. In the context of global corporate citizenship, the article describes the existing state of these two industry organizations remediation efforts to ensure a stable supply chain in Bangladesh, and offers an analysis of existing industry nonmarket strategy approaches to improving contractor's factory fire and building safety environments for their employees. Lastly, a comprehensive set of nonmarket strategies for multinational apparel retailers is recommended when addressing their global corporate citizenship commitments to a safe working environment for Bangladesh garment manufacturing employees.

Exploring Suppliers’ Approaches toward Workplace Safety Compliance in the Global Garment Sector: From Bangladesh Perspective

“…A body of literature considered manufacturers' WSC improvement as legal or regulative reform. It became actionable after continuous pressures from private regulators (Accord/Alliance) and their signatory brands and unions (Labowitz and Baumann-Pauly 2014;Barua and Ansary 2017;Hemphill and White 2018;Sinkovics et al 2016;Salminen 2018). The results of this study are partially consistent with prior findings.…”

Responsible innovation and ethical corporate behavior in the Asian fashion industry: A systematic literature review and avenues ahead

“…Figure 3 highlights the main keywords as “sustainability”, “responsible innovation”, “innovation”, and “corporate social responsibility”, and these appear at the center of the map. They were used during the period of study as a constant in the data collection (Amatulli et al, 2018 ; Brand & Blok, 2019 ; Cao et al, 2020 ; Chou, 2018 ; del Mar Ramos-González et al, 2021 ; Di Vaio et al, 2020 ; Hasan, 2016 , 2018 ; Hemphill & White III, 2018 ; Herrera, 2016 ; Hillestad et al, 2010 ; Imaz & Eizagirre, 2020 ; Koberg & Longoni, 2019 ; Li et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Medik & Stettina, 2014 ; Nathan, 2015 ; Nayak et al, 2019 ; Popescu et al, 2016 ; Ranabahu, 2020 ; Scherer & Voegtlin, 2020 ; Steen et al, 2021 ; Sudolska et al, 2019 ; Thomas & da Silva, 2019 ; Yadlapalli et al, 2018 ). In several papers reviewed, RI, BMI, and CSR interfaces appeared.…”

“…Thus, achieving sustainability in the fashion industry includes promoting CSR throughout the whole chain of suppliers. Scholars have used the concept of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) in various studies (Bag et al, 2018 ; Del Pilar Quiroz Galvan et al, 2021 ; Fontana et al, 2021 ; Fung et al, 2021 ; Handfield et al, 2020 ; Hastig & Sodhi, 2020 ; Hemphill & White, 2018 ; Huq & Stevenson, 2020 ; Huq et al, 2014 , 2016 ; Jia et al, 2018 ; Koberg & Longoni, 2019 ; Li et al, 2014 ; Nayak et al, 2019 ; Pal & Gander, 2018 ; Schrempf-Stirling & Palazzo, 2016 ; Winter & Lasch, 2016 ; Yadlapalli et al, 2018 ; Yang et al, 2019 ; Zhou et al, 2020 ) to refer to the sustainable practices that many global fashion brands are striving to develop along their supply chain. Despite several sustainable practices having been adopted in leading Asian fashion manufacturing countries, such as Vietnam or Bangladesh, some studies have proved that the concept of a sustainable supply chain is new to several actors (Huq et al, 2014 ; Nayak et al, 2019 ; Winter & Lasch, 2016 ).…”

A systematic literature review on employee relations with CSR: State of art and future research agenda

“…In addition, the data set included some studies that did not fall under any of these main categories, and were thus excluded from the analysis. Those studies were single cases with different focuses such as building safe working environment (Hemphill & White III, 2018). As shown in the table, the research showing how employees should be engaged with CSR implementation (94 studies in total) and studies focusing on the benefits of employee engagement with CSR (131 studies in total) have dominated the field of research.…”