Spillover Effects across Transnational Industrial Relations Agreements: The Potential and Limits of Collective Action in Global Supply Chains

Publikation: Beiträge in ZeitschriftenZeitschriftenaufsätzeForschungbegutachtet

Authors

Using qualitative data comprising interviews with multiple respondents in 45 garment brands and retailers, and unions and other stakeholders, the authors analyze the emergence of the Action Collaboration Transformation (ACT) living wages initiative, asking how the interfirm coordination and firm-union cooperation demanded by a multifirm transnational industrial relations agreement (TIRA) developed. Synthesizing insights from the industrial relations and private governance literatures along with recent collective action theory, they identify a new pathway for the emergence of multi-firm TIRAs based on common group understandings, positive experiences of interaction and trust. The central finding is that existing union-inclusive governance initiatives provided a platform from which spillover effects developed, facilitating the formation of new TIRAs. The authors contribute a new mapping of labor governance approaches on the dimensions of inter-firm coordination and labor inclusiveness, foregrounding socialization dynamics as a basis for collective action, and problematizing the limited scalability of this mode of institutional emergence.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
ZeitschriftIndustrial and Labor Relations Review
Jahrgang73
Ausgabenummer4
Seiten (von - bis)995-1020
Anzahl der Seiten26
ISSN0019-7939
DOIs
PublikationsstatusErschienen - 01.08.2020
Extern publiziertJa

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Sarosh Kuruvilla for organizing the Global Supply Chains seminar at MIT in November 2017 where we received insightful feedback from the participants, particularly our discussant Matthew Amengual. We are also indebted to Patrick Feuerstein for detailed feedback on an earlier version of this article, as well as other participants at the research colloquium at SOFI Göttingen in 2018. Christoph Doerrenbaecher, our discussant at the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) in 2017, provided helpful guidance on an early draft, as did Annelien Gansemans, discussant at the 2017 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions of Workshops. Aurélien Acquier and Valentina Carbone gave useful comments at the ESCP Europe Business School seminar in January 2019. We gratefully acknowledge funding by the Volkswagen Foundation for the project Changes in the Governance of Garment Global Production Networks: Lead Firm, Supplier, and Institutional Responses to the Rana Plaza Disaster under the European and Global Challenges Program. Finally, we thank our respondents for their time and insights

Funding Information:
We are grateful to Sarosh Kuruvilla for organizing the Global Supply Chains seminar at MIT in November 2017 where we received insightful feedback from the participants, particularly our discussant Matthew Amengual. We are also indebted to Patrick Feuerstein for detailed feedback on an earlier version of this article, as well as other participants at the research colloquium at SOFI Göttingen in 2018. Christoph Doerrenbaecher, our discussant at the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) in 2017, provided helpful guidance on an early draft, as did Annelien Gansemans, discussant at the 2017 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Sessions of Workshops. Aurélien Acquier and Valentina Carbone gave useful comments at the ESCP Europe Business School seminar in January 2019. We gratefully acknowledge funding by the Volkswagen Foundation for the project Changes in the Governance of Garment Global Production Networks: Lead Firm, Supplier, and Institutional Responses to the Rana Plaza Disaster under the European and Global Challenges Program. Finally, we thank our respondents for their time and insights

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.