Social and environmental sustainability in the clothing industry: a case study of a fair trade retailer

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to assess the issues currently involved in social and environmental sustainability in the clothing industry.Design/methodology/approach -The paper adopts a case study approach to investigate a business that operates successfully in this challenging market.Findings -As a consequence of increasing demand for ethical clothing, it has become standard practice for UK clothing retailers to develop CSR policies which impact upon their methods of garment sourcing and partnerships with suppliers. There is also a significant trend for retailers to offer ethical clothing ranges made from organic cotton or produced by Fair Trade manufacturers. The paper includes a case study on People Tree, which sells Fair Trade clothing sourced from developing countries. People Tree is rare amongst clothing companies in that it provides customers with a transparent view of its production sources via the internet. The company provides an example of how socially responsible and environmentally sustainable global sourcing can be applied in practice.Research limitations/implications -The study focuses on aspects of sustainability in an individual retailer. This could be extended to other ethical retailers in different countries, and a longitudinal study of such companies could be conducted.Originality/value -Literature on ethical fashion companies and their use of socially responsible strategies is sparse, and there is a lack of research that covers both social and environmental sustainability in this market. This paper fills some of the gaps.

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

“…Forty-five relevant papers appearing in focal company categories. [71] x 0 x 0 x x Lueg et al [66] x 0 x x x x Shaw et al [84] 0 0 x 0 0 x Park-Poaps und Rees [65] 0 x 0 x 0 0 Kozlowski et al [99] 0 0 0 0 0 x Milne et al [67] 0 x 0 x x x Sancha et al [13] 0 0 x x x 0 Bhaduri & Ha-Brookshire [100] 0 0 0 0 0 x Egels-Zandén und Hyllman [76] 0 0 x 0 0 0 Dargusch und Ward [90] x x x x 0 0 Curwen et al [92] x x x x 0 0 Carrigan et al [82] x x x x 0 0 Burchielli et al [75] 0 0 x x 0 x Ansett [86] 0 0 0 x x x Goworek [93] 0 x x x 0 x Svensson [95] 0 x 0 x x x Iwanow et al [83] 0 0 0 x x x Börjeson et al [96] x x 0 x 0 0 Giannakis & Papadpoulos [24] x x x x x x de Brito et al [43] x 0 x x 0 0 Perry et al [101] 0 0 0 0 0 0 Locke, Qin et al [97] x 0 x x x x Egels-Zanden & Lindholm [59] x 0 0 x x 0 Locke, Kochan et al [69] x 0 x x 0 x Merk [73] x 0 x x 0 0 MacCarthy & Jayarathne [91] 0 0 x x x 0 Baskaran et al [98] 0 0 0 0 x 0 Anner [68] 0 0 0 x x 0 Miller & Williams [78] 0 0 0 x 0 0 Locke et al [72] x x x x x 0 Yu [80] x 0 0 x 0 0 Hoang & Jones [89] x 0 0 x 0 0 Mamic [94] x x 0 x x x Appendix D [71] 0 0 x 0 Lueg et al [66] 0 0 x 0 Shaw et al [84] 0 0 0 0 Park-Poaps und Rees [65] 0 0 0 0 Kozlowski et al [99] 0 0 0 0 Milne et al …”

“…Park-Poaps and Rees [65] summarize the internal orientation as an "organizational culture in which the organizational core values address principles of fair labour management and the values are reflected on the company's internal alignments and actions". It is suggested that CSR practices can be much more effective when embedded to a company's "ethos and practice" and merely implementing codes of conduct is not enough [82,93,94]. One resulting positive effect can be the reconsideration of the sourcing policies of the buying companies in the form of avoiding orders in countries with poor labor records and exaggerated production deadlines and lead times, as the reader will note later in the supplier barrier section of this paper.…”

“…Social risk management, as indicated by Freise & Seuring [3], includes responsible social risk managers, activity with NGOs, use of codes of conduct or similar standards, social audits, offering incentives for compliant suppliers, cooperation with business partners beyond first tier suppliers, and policies in place for taking action if social misconduct is documented. Thus, social risk management, which is a part of the broader concept of sustainable supply chain management [17], has been described under different terms, such as social supplier development [13] or corporate social responsibility [68,75,85,90,93,98]. It is important to note that all these different terms generally imply the same practices a company can conduct to be socially responsible.…”

“…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.…”

“…Best practice case studies can be conducted to learn from commendable companies (e.g., Goworek [93]). …”