The institutionalization of supply chain corporate social responsibility: field formation in comparative context

On December 14, 2010, twenty-nine people perished in a factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh. At the time of the fire, the factory, "That's It Sportswear," was subcontracting for several well-known brands and retailers, including Gap, J.C. Penney, and Abercrombie & Fitch. In the aftermath of the tragedy, activists called on these and other leading American and European companies to address the high incidence of fire-related workplace deaths occurring annually in Bangladesh. On March 21, 2012, one of the brands that had been placing orders with the factory at the time of the fire, Philips Van Heusen (PVH), signed a contractual, two-year landmark fire safety agreement. Under this agreement, which had been negotiated with local and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and trade unions, Philips Van Heusen committed to spending at least $1 million on improving worker safety via independent inspection of its Bangladeshi suppliers, disclosure and remediation of inspection results, and the creation of worker-led health and safety committees in all supplier factories. Given the lack of an equity relationship between PVH and its subcontractors, and in the absence of any legal obligation on the part of PVH toward the workers employed by its suppliers, how do we explain PVH's voluntary decision to make these commitments? The Bangladesh fire safety agreement is an outgrowth of the phenomenon analyzed in this chapter, which we call "supply chain corporate social responsibility (CSR)": the discourses and practices by which firms voluntarily pledge to guarantee labor standards in the production facilities of independent suppliers. At one level, this phenomenon is not new; since the 1960s, there have been numerous initiatives to develop voluntary schemes addressing the social and developmental implications of multinational corporations and their overseas subsidiaries, particularly in the Global South. These include the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (1976), the International Labour Organization (ILO) Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy (1977), and the United Nations' decade-long project to draft a code of conduct for multinational corporations.