A strategic management perspective on transnational private regulation: theory and evidence form the global apparel industry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Global production chains that span developed and developing countries have simultaneously exacerbated social and environmental issues and eroded governments' regulatory capacity.Non-government organizations (NGOs) and corporations have responded by forming a variety of transnational private regulatory coalitions to create voluntary codes of conduct, sustainability standards, and certification schemes.The two most common coalitional forms are multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), comprising NGOs and corporations, and business-led initiatives (BLIs), composed exclusively of corporations.Despite the prominence of these private regulatory coalitions, we know little about their non-market strategies and the contentious interactions between these two forms of private regulation.This thesis studies the strategic and organizational dimensions of transnational private regulation from a longitudinal, multi-level perspective, explaining why and how it has evolved into a fragmented system characterized by movement-countermovement dynamics.It provides answers to two questions: why do firms adopt different coalitional strategies in response to similar socio-political pressures, and what strategies do MSI and BLI coalitions employ?The research setting is the development of private regulation in the global apparel industry.Using an inductive, longitudinal, comparative research design, I study successive cycles of contention and collaboration within and between political coalitions attempting to address sweatshop concerns.The findings of this thesis challenge the prevailing view that reputational risk and legitimacy concerns explain the choice of coalitional partner and the coalition's strategies.They reveal that a firm's position in the network of global supply chains and its prior participation in collaborative initiatives leads to differences in firm exposure, perception and response to reputational risks arising from activist and government pressures.In addition to reputational risk, firms are subjected to numerous other risks including operational and trade regulation risk, which may be more salient to some firms.Consequently, the differential impact of each set of risks needs to be considered from a holistic rather than isolated perspective.This thesis also reveals how firms' market strategies underpin the heterogeneous non-market strategies employed by private regulatory coalitions and provides an explanation for the growing dominance of BLIs in the governance of global supply chains.Findings suggest that BLI strategies are focused on leveraging existing business associations and networks as a means of facilitating large-scale à optimiser les associations et réseaux d'affaires existants, afin de faciliter l'action collective à grande échelle.Ainsi, les BLI étayent leur crédibilité en misant sur leur capacité à résoudre la fragmentation réglementaire actuelle à l'aide de solutions d'envergure et harmonisées, plutôt que de tenter d'imiter les démarches plus inclusives et transparentes des MSI.Contrairement à bien des études sur les MSI et la collaboration entre les firmes et les ONG, je constate que les stratégies des BLI visent les gouvernements plutôt que la société civile, et sont favorisées par la fragmentation réglementaire découlant des stratégies des MSI.Mes constats dégagent des leviers stratégiques et des mécanismes d'organisation encore peu explorés, et soulignent le besoin de chercher de nouvelles explications aux stratégies des firmes qui répondent aux pressions des militants en accentuant leur réputation.Ma thèse contribue aussi à la pratique et aux politiques en orientant les firmes, les ONG et les décideurs politiques préoccupés par la complexité réglementaire croissante des chaînes d'approvisionnement mondiales et la légitimité des solutions de réglementation privées.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".