Manageable cooperation for regulating workplace conditions in global value chains?

In the global governance arena, arrangements to regulate private labour standards are often presented – in accordance with neoliberal principles favouring market mechanisms over state intervention – as necessary to compensate for insufficient public labour regulation and the weakness of institutions in developing countries. Codes of conducts and private third-party compliance monitoring – although widely criticized for their lack of effectiveness in improving working conditions – have become widespread tools to signal responsible behaviour of international buyers in global supply chains. In this paper, we focus on an innovative monitoring programme, Better Factories Cambodia, which was set up by the International Labour Organization in 2001 to improve overall working conditions in the Cambodian garment industry. We analyse the programme as an organizational hybrid in which the public dimensions that have presided over its existence at the global and local levels are also essential to its effectiveness. We describe both the external and internal organizational dynamics and show that public leverage has enabled cooperation between stakeholders and fostered the accumulation of social capital which is central to effectively regulating labour conditions in the workplace.