Decent Work and Transnational Governance

This book provides guidance for policy and research on how the enforcement of core labour standards in supplier factories of transnational corporations can be improved. The book not only performs a comparative impact assessment of three multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), but also develops an analytical model about the influence of "inclusiveness" on MSIs’ effectiveness.

MSIs are institutions of transnational governance. Several of them have been founded in the international textile, garment, footwear and sporting goods industry to address problems with labour rights violations in global supply chains that neither states nor transnational corporations have been able or willing to solve.

The author asks to what extent different MSIs were successful in improving working conditions in supplier factories in developing countries. It performs an analysis of the ILO Better Factories Cambodia Programme, the Fair Labor Association, and the AVE-GTZ project, using nearly 50 qualitative interviews. The book argues that the variation of degrees of effectiveness depends on the different approaches that underlie the work of each MSI – social dialogue, responsible competitiveness, or risk management.