- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
These speakers share a bleak perspective: A decade’s-worth of high-profile efforts to change sweatshop conditions in overseas apparel factories hasn’t worked. Hannah Jones describes Nike’s dismay following in-depth research at its overseas facilities, where the corporation had attempted to implement codes of conduct and compliance monitoring. The corporation made “some stark realizations,” acknowledging such systemic issues as excessive overtime, unpaid wages, worker harassment and denial of workers’ rights to associate freely. Real remediation of the problem, says Jones, must deal with root causes. “There’s no point in Nike having 96 monitors on a factory floor day in and day out monitoring overtime, if overtime is being caused way up the supply chain.” So Nike is scrutinizing its own behavior as a buyer. We must “incentivize suppliers to become part of business decision-making,” she says, and convince them that creating efficiencies in a volatile market doesn’t mean “squeezing labor costs” but “squeezing time to market.” The worker “is central to that,” and better-trained factory managers may be key.
Scott Nova agrees that major U.S. garment retailers must take corporate responsibility to heart. The pressure on foreign suppliers hasn’t succeeded, he says, because “factory managers conclude correctly that if the brands were truly serious about improved working conditions, they would pay enough to make it possible for those conditions to be achieved.” Instead, factories compete to pick up cheap contracts, pressure their workers to toil for pennies, and use “fakery and deception when customers send auditors to inspect labor conditions.” But there is good news, he says: “The economics of apparel production are such that the problem could be fixed.” Since labor costs are a minute percentage of the retail price of apparel, a tiny increase in the cost of a product passed along to a consumer could enable “brands to pay factories to reflect the true costs of compliance—living wages for workers.”Related Videos
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May 14, 2005
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- About the Speakers
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About the Speakers
Moderator: Richard M. Locke PhD '89
Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship and Political Science
Richard M. Locke teaches in both MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the MIT Department of Political Science in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Locke’s research focuses on economic adjustment and development, comparative labor relations and political economy.
Locke is Faculty Director of the MIT Sloan Fellows Program, a mid-career executive education program at the Sloan School of Management He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, an M.A in Education from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.Hannah Jones
Vice President, Corporate Responsibility
NikeScott Nova
Executive Director, Workers Rights Consortium
Moderator
Speakers
- About the Host
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About the Host
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of the world’s leading business schools — conducting cutting-edge research and providing management education to top students from more than 60 countries. The School is part of MIT’s rich intellectual tradition of education and research.
MIT Sloan began in 1914 as engineering administration curriculum in the MIT Department of Economics and Statistics. The scope and depth of this educational focus have grown steadily in response to advances in the theory and practice of management to today’s broad-based management school.
A program offering a master’s degree in management was established in 1925. The world’s first university-based executive education program — the MIT Sloan Fellows — was created in 1931 under the sponsorship of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., an 1895 MIT graduate who was then chairman of General Motors. A MIT Sloan Foundation grant established the MIT School of Industrial Management in 1952 with a charge of educating the “ideal manager.”
Video Player
Making Globalization Work for All
- Moderator: Richard M. Locke PhD '89
- Hannah Jones
Scott Nova - October 7, 2005
- Running Time: 1:19:27
