China
Africa
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Analysing Performance
Published in Bryan Hopkins, Cultural Differences and Improving Performance, 2016
Ethical issues may also be seen to have financial costs. Consider, for example, the issue of clothing manufacturers using factories in countries such as Vietnam because the cost of labour there is much lower. From a Western ethical perspective, these are often pejoratively described as ‘sweatshops’, because of the low pay and poor working conditions. However, from the perspective of someone looking for employment in Vietnam, such a job might be very attractive.
Product development, fashion buying and merchandising
Published in Textile Progress, 2022
Rachel Parker-Strak, Rosy Boardman, Liz Barnes, Stephen Doyle, Rachel Studd
The fashion industry has long been associated with the use of so called ‘sweatshops’, typically associated with western brands taking advantage of low paid workers in ‘poorer’ countries in Asia and South America. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic increased long-standing ethical issues, shining a media spotlight on them, particularly in relation to the lack of job security for workers in the fashion supply chain (Brydges, Heinze, Retamal, & Henninger, 2021). The lockdown that occurred in India in March 2020, alongside the huge loss of orders resulted in garment workers with no opportunity to earn a wage (Yadav & Priya, 2021). In particular, the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on female employees who make up the largest part of the workforce in the wider supply chain in garment factories (Brydges et al., 2021).
The impact of a firm’s transparent manufacturing practices on women fashion shoppers
Published in Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 2018
Amélia Brandão, Mahesh Gadekar, Francisco Cardoso
A sweatshop suggests the exploitation of workers due to the presence of poor factory working conditions. Sweatshops suffer from numerous social problems such as environmental pollution, excessive exploitation of non-renewable resources, exploitation of workers and income inequalities (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016). Fashion firms have been largely involved in the controversial use of sweatshops (Coakley & Kates, 2013). For instance, prominent brands such as H&M, Nike, Adidas and other brands were found to be involved in manufacturing their apparels in sweatshops (Snyder, 2015). Furthermore, the collapse of an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh in 2013 with a resulting death toll of 1134 brought media attention toward unethical manufacturing practices (Manik, Leahy, & Halog, 2013).