Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains
Sarosh Kuruvilla, Ning Li, and J. Lowell Jackson
This paper, published as a chapter in the International Labor Organization's 2021 volume: Decent Work in a Globalized Economy, shares Professor Sarosh Kuruvilla and the New Conversations Project's new research on the limited progress of private regulation over a decade in multiple countries. The chapter presents a new explanation of the lack of sustained progress based on institutional theory. The chapter also outlines some pathways to transform the organizational field from its current opacity - the inability to see what works - to a more transparent one in which best practices are visible. Such transformation is necessary to effect improvement in workers' lives in global supply chains.