Recherchetool für Materialien

Sourcing Practices in the Garment Industry: The Root Cause for Poor Working Conditions

While research indicates that the sourcing strategies of buyers are one of the root causes of labour rights violations, there is a lack of empirical evidence as well as insight into which practices are most detrimental. Thus, the main question of this paper aims to answer is whether and which sourcing practices impact working conditions in the garment sector.

To address this question, data from garment factories in Cambodia between 2015 and 2018 is analyzed (Better Work, 2021e). The data set is comprised of answers from survey questions of managers and workers in factories that participate in the Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program. This program is part of Better Work (BW), a partnership between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to improve working conditions in the garment industry. When looking for a measure of compliance, instead of using factory assessment data, labour standards are likely based on the answers of individual workers. Thus, a new perspective is taken, defective as working conditions are measured in how they are perceived by workers – putting workers at the centre of the analysis.

Scope: 66 pages
Reference: complimentary Download from betterwork.org