IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i18p11520-d914587.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Increasing Transparency in Global Supply Chains: The Case of the Fast Fashion Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Eve Fraser

    (Nature, Society and Environmental Governance Program, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 2JD, UK)

  • Hamish van der Ven

    (Department of Wood Science, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada)

Abstract

The fast fashion industry is subject to growing calls for transparency, from civil society groups as well as consumers. Despite universal pressure on retailers to disclose information on supply chain practices, uptake of transparency policies and practices has been heterogenous amongst large fast fashion companies. In this paper, we explain variation in transparency practices through a comparison of the four largest fast fashion retailers: H&M, Inditex, Gap, and Fast Retailing. Drawing on cross-case comparison and within-case process tracing, we offer insights into why some retailers are more transparent than others. Our findings suggest that sustainability scandals are a necessary but insufficient condition for motivating firms to increase transparency in their supply chains. Scandals can be an important driver of increased transparency, but only when accompanied by support from senior management and alignment with domestic norms about appropriate corporate conduct. These findings contribute to the literature on transnational business governance, corporate transparency, and sustainable supply-chain management.

Suggested Citation

  • Eve Fraser & Hamish van der Ven, 2022. "Increasing Transparency in Global Supply Chains: The Case of the Fast Fashion Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-24, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:18:p:11520-:d:914587
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11520/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/18/11520/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yefei Yang & Han Han & Peter K. C. Lee, 2017. "An Exploratory Study of the Mechanism of Sustainable Value Creation in the Luxury Fashion Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-16, March.
    2. Stephen Brammer & Stephen Pavelin, 2006. "Voluntary Environmental Disclosures by Large UK Companies," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(7-8), pages 1168-1188.
    3. Stephen Brammer & Stephen Pavelin, 2006. "Voluntary Environmental Disclosures by Large UK Companies," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(7‐8), pages 1168-1188, September.
    4. Muhammad Islam & Craig Deegan, 2010. "Media pressures and corporate disclosure of social responsibility performance information: A study of two global clothing and sports retail companies," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 131-148.
    5. Gary Gereffi, 2014. "Global value chains in a post-Washington Consensus world," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 9-37, February.
    6. Sovacool, Benjamin K. & Walter, Götz & Van de Graaf, Thijs & Andrews, Nathan, 2016. "Energy Governance, Transnational Rules, and the Resource Curse: Exploring the Effectiveness of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 179-192.
    7. Andreas Andrikopoulos & Nikoleta Kriklani, 2013. "Environmental Disclosure and Financial Characteristics of the Firm: The Case of Denmark," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(1), pages 55-64, January.
    8. Caniato, Federico & Caridi, Maria & Crippa, Luca & Moretto, Antonella, 2012. "Environmental sustainability in fashion supply chains: An exploratory case based research," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 659-670.
    9. Locke, Richard M. & Qin, Fei & Brause, Alberto, 2007. "Does monitoring improve labor standards? Lessons from Nike," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59405, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Magnus Boström & Michele Micheletti, 2016. "Introducing the Sustainability Challenge of Textiles and Clothing," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 367-375, December.
    11. Tim Büthe & Walter Mattli, 2011. "The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9470.
    12. Elisa Arrigo, 2020. "Global Sourcing in Fast Fashion Retailers: Sourcing Locations and Sustainability Considerations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-22, January.
    13. Hamish van der Ven & Steven Bernstein & Matthew Hoffmann, 2017. "Valuing the Contributions of Nonstate and Subnational Actors to Climate Governance," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 17(1), pages 1-20, February.
    14. van der Ven, Hamish & Sun, Yixian & Cashore, Benjamin, 2021. "Sustainable commodity governance and the global south," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    15. van der Ven, Hamish, 2014. "Socializing the C-suite: why some big-box retailers are “greener†than others," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 31-63, April.
    16. Graafland, J.J., 2002. "Sourcing ethics in the textile sector: The case of C&A," MPRA Paper 20769, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Peter Dauvergne, 2008. "The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262042460, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. E. Keith Smith & Dennis Kolcava & Thomas Bernauer, 2024. "Stringent sustainability regulations for global supply chains are supported across middle-income democracies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Breeda Comyns, 2016. "Determinants of GHG Reporting: An Analysis of Global Oil and Gas Companies," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(2), pages 349-369, June.
    2. van der Ven, Hamish & Sun, Yixian & Cashore, Benjamin, 2021. "Sustainable commodity governance and the global south," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    3. Breeda Comyns & Frank Figge & Tobias Hahn & Ralf Barkemeyer, 2013. "Sustainability reporting: The role of “Search”, “Experience” and “Credence” information," Accounting Forum, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 231-243, September.
    4. Md Ali Arshad Chowdhury & Mohammad Morshedur Rahman & Mouri Dey & Syed Moudud-Ul-Huq & Sk Alamgir Hossain, 2023. "Perceived Pressures and Motivations for Environmental Disclosures: Role of Certification," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    5. Grigoris Giannarakis & Andreas Andronikidis & Nikolaos Sariannidis, 2020. "Determinants of environmental disclosure: investigating new and conventional corporate governance characteristics," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 294(1), pages 87-105, November.
    6. Walid Ben‐Amar & Mathieu Gomes & Hania Khursheed & Sylvain Marsat, 2022. "Climate change exposure and internal carbon pricing adoption," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(7), pages 2854-2870, November.
    7. Akbas Halil Emre, 2016. "The Relationship Between Board Characteristics and Environmental Disclosure: Evidence from Turkish Listed Companies," South East European Journal of Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 11(2), pages 7-19, December.
    8. Cornelia Beck & Geoffrey Frost & Stewart Jones, 2018. "CSR disclosure and financial performance revisited: A cross-country analysis," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 43(4), pages 517-537, November.
    9. Feng Wang & Siyue Yang & Ann Reisner & Na Liu, 2019. "Does Green Credit Policy Work in China? The Correlation between Green Credit and Corporate Environmental Information Disclosure Quality," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-15, January.
    10. Alicia Girón & Amirreza Kazemikhasragh & Antonella Francesca Cicchiello & Eva Panetti, 2021. "Sustainability Reporting and Firms’ Economic Performance: Evidence from Asia and Africa," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 12(4), pages 1741-1759, December.
    11. Iordanis M. Eleftheriadis & Evgenia G. Anagnostopoulou, 2015. "Relationship between Corporate Climate Change Disclosures and Firm Factors," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(8), pages 780-789, December.
    12. Katia Furlotti & Tatiana Mazza & Veronica Tibiletti & Silvia Triani, 2019. "Women in top positions on boards of directors: Gender policies disclosed in Italian sustainability reporting," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(1), pages 57-70, January.
    13. Riccardo Torelli & Federica Balluchi & Katia Furlotti, 2020. "The materiality assessment and stakeholder engagement: A content analysis of sustainability reports," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(2), pages 470-484, March.
    14. Ishmael Tingbani & Lyton Chithambo & Venancio Tauringana & Nikolaos Papanikolaou, 2020. "Board gender diversity, environmental committee and greenhouse gas voluntary disclosures," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(6), pages 2194-2210, September.
    15. Amal Aouadi & Sylvain Marsat, 2018. "Do ESG Controversies Matter for Firm Value? Evidence from International Data," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(4), pages 1027-1047, September.
    16. Douglas A. Adu & Antoinette Flynn & Colette Grey, 2022. "Executive compensation and sustainable business practices: The moderating role of sustainability‐based compensation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 698-736, March.
    17. Charles H. Cho & Jonathan Maurice & Emmanuelle Nègre & Marie-Anne Verdier, 2016. "Is environmental disclosure good for the environment? A meta-analysis and research agenda," Post-Print halshs-01369422, HAL.
    18. Shiyu Wu & Xinyi Li & Xiaosen Du & Zexin Li, 2022. "The Impact of ESG Performance on Firm Value: The Moderating Role of Ownership Structure," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-22, November.
    19. María Luisa Pajuelo Moreno & Teresa Duarte-Atoche, 2019. "Relationship between Sustainable Disclosure and Performance—An Extension of Ullmann’s Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-33, August.
    20. Patricia Crifo & Elena Escrig-Olmedo & Nicolas Mottis, 2019. "Corporate Governance as a Key Driver of Corporate Sustainability in France: The Role of Board Members and Investor Relations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(4), pages 1127-1146, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:18:p:11520-:d:914587. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.