Field opacity and practice-outcome decoupling: private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains

Sarosh Kuruvilla, Mingwei Liu, Chunyun Li and Wansi Chen

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Although firms in diverse industries increasingly adopt private regulation of labor standards for workers in their global supply chains, growing scholarly evidence suggests that this approach has not generated sustainable improvements in working conditions for those workers. The authors draw on recent developments in institutional theory regarding the development of opaque institutional fields that cause the decoupling between practices and outcomes to develop a new explanation for the lack of sustainable improvement in labor practices in supply chains. Using qualitative and quantitative data from a global apparel supplier and a global home products retailer, they demonstrate the various ways in which opacity causes decoupling between private regulation practices of global firms and outcomes for workers in supply chains.

Keywords: multinational corporations; corporate codes of practice; labor standards; global supply chains; sustainability; social auditing; private regulation; private governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2020-02-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 24, February, 2020, 73(4), pp. 841-872. ISSN: 0019-7939

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