TY - JOUR

T1 - Contested Understandings in the Global Garment Industry after Rana Plaza

AU - Ashwin, Sarah

AU - Kabeer, Naila

AU - Schüßler, Elke

N1 - The contributions in this cluster are part of the project ‘Changes in the Governance of Garment Global Production Networks: Lead Firm, Supplier and Institutional Responses to the Rana Plaza Disaster’, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation under its Europe and Global Challenges programme, whose support we gratefully acknowledge. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Authors. Development and Change published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Institute of Social Studies

PY - 2020/9/1

Y1 - 2020/9/1

N2 - This Introduction synthesizes the key themes of this special cluster of articles and explores the implications of the three contributions on garment supply chains after the Rana Plaza disaster. The three articles examine the perspectives of key stakeholders in garment value chains — global buyers, managers of garment factories in Bangladesh, and workers at these factories — and analyses their responses to the new governance initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of Rana Plaza. Placing the contrasting perspectives of these stakeholders alongside each other starkly reveals how their different positions within hierarchically organized global value chains form the particular lens through which they view post-Rana Plaza initiatives. This special cluster scrutinizes the particular understandings of these stakeholders and reveals the very different capacity for voice and influence that they bring to bear in shaping outcomes. It reflects on the contradictory imperatives faced by actors in the garment industry caught between a logic of competition on the one hand and global labour standards norms on the other. The Introduction concludes by examining the prospects for a re-embedding of the market in global value chains via the activation of civil society.

AB - This Introduction synthesizes the key themes of this special cluster of articles and explores the implications of the three contributions on garment supply chains after the Rana Plaza disaster. The three articles examine the perspectives of key stakeholders in garment value chains — global buyers, managers of garment factories in Bangladesh, and workers at these factories — and analyses their responses to the new governance initiatives that emerged in the aftermath of Rana Plaza. Placing the contrasting perspectives of these stakeholders alongside each other starkly reveals how their different positions within hierarchically organized global value chains form the particular lens through which they view post-Rana Plaza initiatives. This special cluster scrutinizes the particular understandings of these stakeholders and reveals the very different capacity for voice and influence that they bring to bear in shaping outcomes. It reflects on the contradictory imperatives faced by actors in the garment industry caught between a logic of competition on the one hand and global labour standards norms on the other. The Introduction concludes by examining the prospects for a re-embedding of the market in global value chains via the activation of civil society.

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85080064830&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/3d844ac5-20d9-3dd8-ad8b-56aa8b1e7df6/

U2 - 10.1111/dech.12573

DO - 10.1111/dech.12573

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85080064830

VL - 51

SP - 1296

EP - 1305

JO - Development and Change

JF - Development and Change

SN - 0012-155X

IS - 5

ER -