ABSTRACT
In spite of their commitment for corporate social responsibility (CSR), many apparel manufacturers and retailers in the past have abused human rights by operating sweatshops in developing nations. The rst incident that attracted signicant media attention is the working conditions of a factory producing Kathie Lee Gifford’s line of clothing for WalMart in 1996 (Park-Poaps and Rees 2010). Since then, there has been a steady increase in tragic incidents in this industry arising out of work rights abuse and human exploitation to safety that resulted in huge death tolls (Perry and Towers 2013). Some of the more recent incidents include res in Ali Garment and Tazreen Fashion factory in September and November 2012, respectively. In these two devastating re incidents, more than 400 workers were killed and over 500 workers suffered injuries. However, the incident that shocked the apparel supply chains was the collapse of Rana Plaza in May 2013, which killed more than 1130 workers and injured more than 2500 (Lund-Thomsen and Lindgreen 2013). These incidents have raised concerns regarding social and environmental aspects of the global apparel supply chain among stakeholders such as customers, competitors, regulators, industry peers, and media (ParkPoaps and Rees 2010, Gallear et al. 2012). The usual problem that the Western garment retailers encounter is with the visibility of the complex network of global supply chains (Park et al. 2010).
