Contest in the boundaries of corporate social responsibility: Emergence of nongovernmental systems of labour regulation in the textile and apparel industry


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi, Siyaset Bilimi ve Kamu Yönetimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2009

Öğrenci: BURCU GÜNDÜZ

Danışman: OSMAN GALİP YALMAN

Özet:

The thesis investigates the reasons behind the proliferation of non-governmental systems of labour regulation in the textile and apparel industry in the USA, European Union and Turkey. The aim of the study is to identify the main structural factors, strategies and agencies which drive the process for the emergence of these systems within the confines of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) discourse and assess their effectiveness and sustainability as a form of regulation. The thesis concludes that the incapability of the traditional institutions to regulate and equalize labour standards throughout the buyer-driven apparel value chains played a key role in the search for new regulatory mechanisms. Among many alternatives, the contests and compromises between different strategies constrained by the current structural factors resulted in the dominance of non-governmental systems of regulation resting on the extension of regulatory authority from the public to the private institutions. However, whilst filling some gaps between the organization of production and existing regulatory institutions through transforming into more collective forms, these systems tend to supplement the traditional institutions of regulation in a period of crisis rather than replacing them, since their scope fall short for solving the problems of standardization, equalization and generalization of the labour standards and their associated costs.