Employee rights protection and financial performance

Peter K.C. Lee, Antonio K.W. Lau and T.C.E. Cheng

Journal of Business Research, 2013, vol. 66, issue 10, 1861-1869

Abstract: Despite the existence of a substantial body of implementation guidelines and literature on employee rights, many organizations still adopt irresponsible employee practices such as child labor and appalling workplace conditions. The implementation of such irresponsible employee practices in some suppliers has badly affected the business performance and reputation of global giants like Nike, Adidas, and Apple. The study here conceptualizes employee rights protection as a management initiative concerning an organization's efforts in managing employees responsibly. By drawing from the literature on social initiatives and supply chain management, organizations should adopt employee rights protection to improve their corporate reputation and financial performance, and that it is important for buyers to involve suppliers to implement such an initiative in order to improve the financial performance of both parties in the buyer–supplier relationship. Based on data collected from 200 matched pairs of manufacturers and suppliers in the food, pharmaceutical, automotive, and clothing industries of China, all the posited hypotheses of this research receive support. The findings contribute to practice by offering empirical evidence on the strategic importance of employee rights protection and showing the critical role of suppliers in implementing this initiative. This research also provides new research insights that extend the literature on labor rights, business ethics, CSR, and supply chain management.

Keywords: Employee rights; Corporate social responsibility; Manufacturing industry; China; Empirical study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296313000313
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:66:y:2013:i:10:p:1861-1869

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2013.02.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().