Corporate Strategy and the Management of Ethical Trade: The Case of the UK Food and Clothing Retailers
Corporate Strategy and the Management of Ethical Trade: The Case of the UK Food and Clothing Retailers
复制标题
公司战略和道德贸易管理：英国食品和服装零售商的案例
DOI：
10.1068/a3753
复制
发表时间：
2005
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Hughes
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Hughes
涉及工人福利行为准则的道德贸易最近已成为新自由主义贸易环境下全球商品链企业自我监管的一种形式。我根据道德贸易嵌入企业战略和管理系统的方式对道德贸易提出了特别的批评。英国领先食品和服装零售商的道德贸易策略构成了调查的实证焦点，经济地理学文献中有关企业战略和公司间组织的理论被用来获得对这些零售商在试图将道德贸易原则在其全球供应链中付诸实践时所使用的管理系统的批判性见解。零售商之间对道德贸易的承诺存在差异，这是由企业文化、财务管理和企业重组问题造成的。人们认为，对道德贸易策略的不同程度的承诺反过来会影响供应链中社会审计的组织方法。建议零售公司采用三种截然不同的道德监督组织模式——保持距离的方法、协调的方法和发展的方法——每种方法对供应商和生产现场的工人都有不同的影响。我认为，企业对道德贸易的态度存在显着差异，并且这些差异有能力影响出口生产地劳动条件的监管。
Ethical trade, involving codes of conduct for worker welfare, has recently emerged as a form of corporate self-regulation for global commodity chains in the context of a neoliberal trading environment. I present a particular critique of ethical trade based on its embeddedness in corporate strategies and management systems. The ethical trading strategies of leading UK food and clothing retailers form the empirical focus of inquiry, and theories found in the literature on economic geography concerning corporate strategy and interfirm organisation are used to gain critical insight into the management systems used by these retailers when they attempt to put ethical trading principles into practice in their global supply chains. Variations are observed between retailers in terms of their commitment to ethical trade, which are shaped by issues of corporate culture, financial management, and corporate restructuring. Varying levels of commitment to ethical trading strategy are argued in turn to influence organisational approaches to social auditing in the supply chain. Three contrasting modes of organisation for ethical monitoring are suggested to be used by retail companies—the arm's-length approach, the coordinated approach, and the developmental approach—each of which holds contrasting implications for suppliers and workers at production sites. I argue that corporate approaches to ethical trade vary markedly and that these variations have the capacity to shape the regulation of labour conditions at sites of export production.