ABSTRACT
The corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse of today has resulted in an increasing pressure on MNCs to demonstrate that they follow responsible and sustainable business practices. This development is at least partly driven by corporate scandals. Whereas over recent years most of these were related to financial fraud such as the case of Enron or environmental pollution such as BP's Deep Water Horizon oil spill, unhealthy and inhuman working conditions have also tarnished the reputation of MNCs. Although it is generally suggested that there is too little attention by business on employee well-being and health (Pfeffer 2010), it is assumed that this is an even bigger issue in regard to employees in developing countries. One of the most prominent and still widely known examples is Nike. In the 1990s it became public that supplier plants of this athletic footwear company underpaid workers in Indonesia, used child labor in Cambodia and Pakistan and had poor working conditions in China and Vietnam and thus this brand name “became synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse” (Locke and Romis 2010: 51). Recent reminders that these issues are still prevalent in the supply chain of MNCs are major accidents in ready-made garment factories in Bangladesh. In November 2012 the Tazreen Fashion fire killed more than 110 workers and in April 2013 the collapse of the Rama Plaza building, where five factories were based, killed more than 1,200 workers. More generally it is suggested that Bangladesh “has 7 m child workers; fires and collapses are common; working conditions are routinely poor; labour organizers are victimized” (FT 02052013: 11). Whereas until recently it has been widely accepted in the international management literature that in developing countries efficiency-seeking strategies of MNCs that aim to reduce costs in the value chain are legitimate, the CSR discourse is changing this.
