Private, voluntary compliance programs, promoted by global corporations and nongovernmental organizations alike, have produced only modest and uneven improvements in working conditions and labor rights in most global supply chains. Through a detailed study of a major global apparel company and its suppliers, this article argues that this compliance model rests on misguided theoretical and empirical assumptions concerning the power of multinational corporations in global supply chains, the role information (derived from factory audits) plays in shaping the behavior of key actors (e.g., global brands, transnational activist networks, suppliers, purchasing agents, etc.) in these production networks, and the appropriate incentives required to change behavior and promote improvements in labor standards in these emergent centers of global production. The authors argue that it is precisely these faulty assumptions and the way they have come to shape various labor compliance initiatives throughout the world-even more than a lack of commitment, resources, or transparency by global brands and their suppliers to these programs-that explain why this compliance-focused model of private voluntary regulation has not succeeded. In contrast, this article documents that a more commitment-oriented approach to improving labor standards coexists and, in many of the same factories, complements the traditional compliance model. This commitment-oriented approach, based on joint problem solving, information exchange, and the diffusion of best practices, is often obscured by the debates over traditional compliance programs but exists in myriad factories throughout the world and has led to sustained improvements in working conditions and labor rights at these workplaces.

Using a unique data set based on factory audits of working conditions in over 800 of Nike's suppliers across 51 countries over the years 1998–2005, the authors explore whether monitoring for compliance with corporate codes of conduct—currently the principal way both global corporations and labor rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories—achieved remediation, as indicated by improved working conditions and stepped-up enforcement of labor rights. Despite substantial efforts and investments by Nike and its staff to improve working conditions among its suppliers, monitoring alone appears to have produced only limited results. However, when monitoring efforts were combined with other interventions focused on tackling some of the root causes of poor working conditions—in particular, by enabling suppliers to better schedule their work and to improve quality and efficiency—working conditions seem to have improved considerably.

Recent research on regulation and governance suggests that a mixture of public and private interventions is necessary to improve working conditions and environmental standards within global supply chains. Yet less attention has been directed to how these different forms of regulation interact in practice. The form of these interactions is investigated through a contextualized comparison of suppliers producing for Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's leading global electronics firms. Using a unique dataset describing Hewlett-Packard's supplier audits over time, coupled with qualitative fieldwork at a matched pair of suppliers in Mexico and the Czech Republic, this study shows how private and public regulation can interact in different ways -sometimes as complements;other times as substitutes -depending upon both the national contexts and the specific issues being addressed. Results from our analysis show that private interventions do not exist within a vacuum, but rather these efforts to enforce labour and environmental standards are affected by state and non-governmental actors.

This study tests the hypothesis that lean manufacturing improves the social performance of manufacturers in emerging markets. We analyze an intervention by Nike Inc. to promote the adoption of lean manufacturing in its apparel supply chain across eleven developing countries. Using difference-indifferences estimates from a panel of over three hundred factories, we find that lean adoption was associated with a 15 percentage point reduction in noncompliance with labor standards that primarily reflect factory wage and work hour practices. However, we find a null effect on factory health and safety standards. This pattern is consistent with a causal mechanism that links lean to improved social performance through changes in labor relations, rather than improved management systems. These findings offer evidence that capabilitybuilding interventions may reduce social harm in global supply chains.

IntroductionCommon challenges (e.g., changing conditions of international competition, massive industrial change, pressures for the decentralization of bargaining and increased "flexibility") confront labor movements in all the advanced industrial states. The new terms of international competition and technological innovation have radically altered markets and the organization of production. The simultaneous globalization and segmentation of national markets has rendered traditional business practices in all advanced industrial nations less effective. Technological innovations have not only shortened product life cycles but also created opportunities for firms to compete along a variety of new dimensions. 2The break-up of national markets has spurred individual firms and even entire industries to experiment with a variety of alternative business strategies that test and/or transcend traditional industrial relations practices.Everywhere, unions have encountered new pressures for greater "flexibility", often in connection with demands from employers for a decentralization of bargaining.3 This article examines the implications these changes hold for students of labor as they seek to make sense of emerging new patterns of labor success and failure, and of institutional resiliency and breakdown.The conventional approach to these questions is to focus on a single process like bargaining decentralization or work reorganization, and to use this as the basis for cross-national comparisons. In this article, we lay out an alternative research strategy based on what we call "contextualized comparisons." This alternative approach builds on and extends previous research by a number of labor scholars working from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. In particular, we rely heavily on recent institutionalist and what we call "political constructionist" analyses. 4 By pushing the core categories of institutional analysis, we demonstrate how common international pressures are in fact refracted into divergent struggles over particular national practices. Then, drawing on the insights of the political constructionist approach, we show why within any given country certain issues (and not others) spark intense conflict because of the way they are connected to the foundations on which union identities themselves rest. Contextualized comparisons are not meant to displace but rather complement traditional "matched comparisons;" they bring new insights to labor scholarship by highlighting unexpected parallels 1 across cases that the conventional literature sees as very different, and conversely, by underscoring significant differences between cases typically seen as "most similar."This article is divided into three sections. The first part outlines the traditional approach to comparative labor research and assesses its relative strengths and weaknesses. The following section lays out the logic of "contextualized comparisons", showing how this alternative approach builds on the core insights of institutional and political...

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Poor working conditions in global supply chains have led to private initiatives that seek to regulate labor practices in developing countries. But how effective are these regulatory programs? We investigate the effects of transnational private regulation by studying Hewlett-Packard's (HP) supplier responsibility program. Using analysis of factory audits, interviews with buyer and supplier management, and field research at production facilities across seven countries, we find that national context -not repeated audits, capability building, or supply chain power -is the key predictor of workplace compliance. Quantitative analysis shows that factories in China are markedly less compliant than those in countries with stronger civil society and regulatory institutions. Comparative field research then illustrates how these local institutions complement transnational private regulation. Although these findings imply limits to private regulation in institutionally poor settings, they also highlight opportunities for productive linkages between transnational actors and local state and society.

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