Social sustainability and human rights in global supply chains
研究揭示了全球企业保障供应商劳工条件的三种方法：交易型、关系型和权利持有者型，后者强调工人权利并赋予其维权能力，对学者和从业者具有重要参考价值。
Purpose Firms are accountable for upholding worker rights and well-being in their supply base. The authors unpack the evolution in lead firm thinking and practice about how to assure labor conditions at suppliers. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted interviews with the social sustainability leaders at 22 global corporations (“lead firms”) and their sustainability consultants to understand how they think about, and enact efforts, to support labor in their supply base. The authors complement this with an analysis of stated practice in proprietary supplier codes of conduct for the manufacturing and extractive-related firms in the S&P 500 and FTSE 350. Findings The authors’ interviews suggest firms follow two distinct and cumulative approaches: a transactional-based approach leveraging collective buyer power to enforce supplier compliance and a relational-based approach focused on mutual capacity building between lead (buyer) firms and their suppliers. The authors also see the emergence, in a small subset of firms, of a bottom-up approach that recognizes supplier workers as rights-holders and empowers them to understand and claim their rights. Originality/value The authors identify systematic convergence in supplier codes of conduct. While the transactional and relational approaches are well documented in the supply chain social sustainability literature, the rights-holder approach is not. Its emergence presents an important complement to the other approaches and enables a broader recognition of human rights, and the duty of Western firms to assure those rights.