新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

The Effects Of Social Movement Pressure On "Corporate Social Responsibility" In The Apparel Industry.

摘要：

Emerging theories of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) frame it largely as a market-driven response to signals from consumers and investors. As one component of a larger project to re-theorize CSR in more political terms, we focus on the role of social movement pressure in shaping CSR at the firm and field levels. Using data on apparel and footwear firms in the 1990s, we demonstrate four main points: (1) Social movement campaigns shaped external, field-level evaluations of firms' social performance, generating new information about labor practices and serving as a "prime mover" for CSR in this arena. (2) While social movement pressure spurred a search for solutions among companies, one prominent response—the corporate code of conduct—in fact required no firm-specific movement pressure for its adoption. Instead, this low-cost, largely symbolic practice spread quickly through the industry and was adopted by many firms that had not been the target of activism. (3) On the other hand, CSR practices that require firms to sacrifice even a small degree of autonomy depend more directly on social movement pressure. Firm-specific pressure was a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for large corporations to participate in multi-stakeholder monitoring/certification associations. (4) The intensity of social movement pressure increases the likelihood of participating in a multi-stakeholder association, even controlling for reputational investments that may also give firms an interest in CSR.