Sheila Hicks The play between material, colour and space unfolds the unique oeuvre of Sheila Hicks: In large and small-format wall works, carpets, reliefs, sculptures and installations, the seemingly endless possibilities of these three dimensions are fanned out. ‘What can you do with a thread?’ is the question that the artist has been tirelessly pursuing since her studies with Josef Albers at the Yale School of Art in the 1950s. In her endeavor, she developed various techniques that repeatedly challenge and surprise our perception and our concepts of art and textiles, color and structure, work and space. Mehr Details
Poster: Fair consumption alternatives How consciously do you consume? The poster invites you to question your own clothing consumption and try out new ways. It encourages us to think about alternatives: Does it always have to be new, or are there sustainable alternatives such as secondhand, loan or exchange? Mehr Details
Non Sibi, Sed Omnibus: Influence of Supplier Collective Behaviour on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Bangladeshi Apparel Supply Chain Local supplier corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries represents a powerful tool to improve labour conditions. This paper pursues an inter-organizational network approach to the global value chain (GVC) literature to understand the influence of suppliers’ collective behaviour on their CSR engagement. This exploratory study of 30 export-oriented and first-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, a developing country, makes three relevant contributions to GVC scholarship. First, we show that suppliers are interlinked in a horizontal network that restricts unilateral CSR engagement. This is justified in that unilateral CSR engagement is a source of heterogeneity in labour practices; Thus, it triggers worker rest. Second, we present and discuss an exploratory framework based on four scenarios of how suppliers currently engage in CSR given their network’s pressure towards collective behaviour: unofficial CSR engagement, geographic isolation, size and competitive differentiation, and external pressure. Finally, we show the need to spread CSR homogeneously among suppliers and to reconceptualize the meaning of CSR in developing countries, investigating more scrutiny toward horizontal dynamics. Mehr Details
Fact sheet: Minimum wages in Indonesia – no trace of livelihood security Living wages are a key element of decent work. In the countries of the Global South, however, a large proportion of employees cannot live humanely on hard-earned wages. This also applies to employees in the textile and clothing industry, who are usually paid at the level of state minimum wages. However, these minimum wages are usually only sufficient to survive if they are increased by countless overtime hours or supplemented by a second income in the family. Using the example of Indonesia, one of the ten largest export nations for clothing worldwide, SÜDWIND will examine in several fact sheets and a study the question of which paths there can lead from just these minimum wages to living wages. We start with the question of how and at what level minimum wages are set in Indonesia. Mehr Details
Governance of sustainable supply chains in the fast fashion industry This paper examines the impact of corporate social responsibility behavior on the sustainability performance of focal companies and their partners in fast fashion supply chains. The attributes of sustainability and the mechanism of sustainability governance of the fast fashion supply chain are also discussed. From the perspective of strategic corporate social responsibility, we first analyze the motives for adopting sustainability governance in fast fashion supply chains, and identify seven competitive sustainable attributes of the fast fashion product based on sustainable development theory. Then, by establishing a sustainability governance framework, we identify seven factors that affect the sustainability governance decision-making and evaluate the efficiency and legitimacy mechanism of sustainability governance from internal and external perspectives. Finally, we explore the application of the governance mechanisms via a case study based on H&M’s seven sustainability commitments. The findings suggest that the core influence and centrality of a corporation should be strengthened from the perspective of internal governance, and stakeholders should collaborate to achieve sustainability governance throughout the entire fast fashion supply chain from the perspective of external governance. Mehr Details
