Does Compliance Pay? Social Standards and Firm‐Level Trade

Distelhorst, Greg; Locke, Richard M.

doi:10.1111/ajps.12372

Cited by 78 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(57 reference statements)

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“…When it comes to the implementation of labour standards down the supply chain to the suppliers, the performance of this company's CoC is low and mostly limited to control over child labour. This results from low monitoring from the buying company and no incentives to comply with these higher labour standards (see also Distelhorst and Locke 2018 for the same phenomenon in other contexts).…”

Section: Conclusion: Understanding the Limitations Of Labour Standards Through Work Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate labour standards and work quality: insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico

Hoogesteger

Massink

2021

Third World Quarterly

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In this article we analyse how workers perceive corporate labour standards and the related work conditions in the agro-export sector of Northern Guanajuato, Central Mexico. We do so by first comparing labour standards on local farms to labour standards at an international fresh vegetable production, harvesting, processing and export company that has explicit corporate labour standards. Second, we present how workers from two rural communities of landless workers employed in the agro-export industry perceive the differences between work at local farms and work at the agro-export company. Our results show that better pay and secondary benefits resulting from corporate labour standards do not necessarily translate to perceptions of better work quality. This relates to the broader work conditions in which these labour standards are inserted. Many workers prefer work with lower labour standards but that has more convenient working hours and enables engagement in family and social activities alongside the job. Based on these results we argue that, from a sociological perspective, work quality is a situated and very context-specific notion. Therefore, higher labour standards and better pay even in contexts of cheap labour and widespread poverty are not necessarily associated by workers with higher work quality.

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Section: Conclusion: Understanding the Limitations Of Labour Standards Through Work Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Corporate labour standards and work quality: insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico

Hoogesteger

Massink

2021

Third World Quarterly

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“…Malesky and Mosley (2018) offer survey evidence showing that Vietnamese exporters report higher willingness to invest in labor compliance in order to do business with importers that provide higher price mark-ups. Distelhorst and Locke (2018) found that exporters across 36 countries were, on average, rewarded by increased purchasing when they improved compliance with social standards. Oka (2012) shows that compliance with certain labor standards, such as health and safety, enabled factories in Cambodia to secure long-term sourcing relationships with reputation-conscious buyers.…”

Section: Compliance-promoting Incentives In Trading Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Distelhorst and Locke (2018) find, studying a different sample of export manufacturers, that noncompliant factories also show inferior performance in quality and on-time delivery metrics (seeTable 1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Purchasing as Labor Regulation: The Missing Middle

Amengual¹,

Distelhorst²,

Tobin

2019

ILR Review

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Do purchasing practices support or undermine the regulation of labor standards in global supply chains? This study offers the first analysis of the full range of supply chain regulatory efforts, integrating records of factory labor audits with purchase order microdata. Studying an apparel and equipment retailer with a strong reputation for addressing labor conditions in its suppliers, the authors show that the retailer persuaded factories to improve and terminated factories with poor labor compliance. However, the authors also find that purchase orders did not increase when labor standards improved. If anything, factories whose standards worsened tended to see their orders increase. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, this “missing middle” in incentives for compliance appears unrelated to any cost advantage of noncompliant factories. Instead, lack of flexibility in supplier relationships created obstacles to reallocating orders in response to compliance findings.

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“…Using data from a large sourcing company, Distelhorst and Locke () find that suppliers that improve their performance on labor and environmental audits do subsequently receive larger orders. On the other hand, looking closely at one retailer with a reputation for social responsibility, Amengual et al (forthcoming) find that improvements were not generally rewarded with larger orders.…”

Section: Organizational Power At a Distancementioning

confidence: 99%

Power at a distance: Organizational power across boundaries

2019

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Organizational approaches can help to make sense of social phenomena, including inequality, politics, and culture. This is partly because large organizations exercise great power, both over employees and in their external environments. Revising Charles Perrow's classic account of the “society of organizations” in the 20th century, we argue that the organizational landscape has changed. There has been a dis‐embedding of individuals from organizations that contrasts with Perrow's idea of individuals being “absorbed” by organizations. Despite this hollowing out, there is a persistence of concentrated economic power or “concentration without centralization.” Organizational power in this landscape is increasingly exercised at a distance, not only geographically but also in the sense of moving across organizational boundaries and through technologies of valuation. Three bodies of research exemplify different types of power at a distance. (a) Research on global production networks shows how power travels across geographic and network distances. (b) Research on financialization and its consequences shows how power is mediated by frames and metrics. (c) Emerging research on big data and Artificial Intelligence shows how power is encoded into seemingly neutral technologies and made to seem inevitable. This work helps to update the sociology of organizations and opens up new research questions.

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Does Compliance Pay? Social Standards and Firm‐Level Trade

Cited by 78 publications

References 52 publications

Corporate labour standards and work quality: insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico

Corporate labour standards and work quality: insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico

Global Purchasing as Labor Regulation: The Missing Middle

Power at a distance: Organizational power across boundaries

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