Labor Standards and Corporate Responsibility

NYU Wagner podcast here, reporting research by Richard Locke, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Political Science at MIT, into Nike's monitoring mechanisms of its suppliers and the impacts (or lack thereof) on labor treatment.

Monitoring doesn't work well. Relationships between retailers and suppliers (frequent visits to factories) do work well. Cultures in corporations need to change - that's when things take off. Also, upstream effects of ordering habits of large retailers.

"...the discourse of amoral managers in exotic lands, you know, is just one piece of it; maybe we can clean up our house at home and have a pretty interesting impact."