Introduction

This introductory chapter provides a background of private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains. Over the past three decades, there has been a plethora of private, voluntary regulatory initiatives with regard to social (labor) and environmental issues. This proliferation has come about in part because of pressure from antiglobalizers calling for global governance, and consumer and activist movements calling for global corporations to be more socially and environmentally responsible. There are many different methods of private voluntary regulation for labor standards, but the most common is the private regulation model. It has three elements: setting of standards regarding labor practices in global supply chains through a corporate code of conduct generally based on the conventions of the International Labour Organization; “auditing” or “social auditing” that involves monitoring whether supplier factories comply with the code of conduct; and incentives for suppliers to improve compliance by linking future sourcing decisions to their compliance records (penalizing or dropping noncompliant suppliers and rewarding more compliant ones). The book looks at the current state and future trajectory of this form of private regulation.