A Responsible Globalization ? – RESPGLOB

Contemporary forms of globalization contribute to increasing the distance between the consumer and the producer and make it more difficult to trace the origin of the products they consume. Concerns about environmental and social consequences are raised by civil society, whose more demanding expectations in terms of sustainable development are pressing companies to commit to more responsible actions. An important aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for firms is thus managing the tension between optimizing their global value chain (GVC) and meeting their responsibility commitments. The apparel industry is an ideal framework for exploring these choices: it is among the first sectors that saw retailers move production to low wage countries in the 1990s. It is also the second most polluting industry in the world. The development of GVCs moreover carried with it opacity, not only on the respect of working conditions in the factories abroad but also on the environmental impact of production. However, important mediatization and NGO campaigning contribute to an unprecedented visibility of problems. In addition, the “cradle-to-grave” carbon footprint of production can now be calculated for each detailed product. Faced with reputational shocks, multinational retailers may either join international initiatives, or multiply ethical certifications, or disengage from problematic sourcing. However, we know very little about the reality of those adjustments. Our project quantifies a large set of adjustments made by apparel companies in response to the tension between the fragmentation of GVCs and the responsibilities they face. We build a novel database to address: i. the repercussions from reputation shocks in terms of consumers’ demand and firms’ sourcing contracts, ii. firms' involvement in environmental and social responsibility commitments and certifications, and iii. firms' strategies to accommodate potentially conflicting consumers' preferences.