Book Review- ‘The Promise & Limits of Private Power: Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy’ – Richard M Locke

Jul 16, 2013Highlights

The Bangladesh factory collapse has extorted suggestions and analysis from experts in various fields. But few examine the issue through an empirical lens. Brown University Professor (currently at MIT’s Political Science Department) Richard M Locke’s latest book The Promise & Limits of Private Power, published in April 2013, aims to do just that.

The review below, taken from an online MIT portal , outlines the structure of the book and defines its basic contributions.

The Promise & Limits of Private Power examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains Using unique data (internal audit reports, access to over 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands (NlKE, Hewlett Packard, Philips van Heusen) and the ILO’s Factory Improvement program in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of these approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages, working hours for the millions of workers employed in today’s global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically-grounded analysis of these programs, this book manuscript illustrates what mix of private and public regulation is needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.

The book makes three basic contributions:

1) First, it makes an empirical contribution in that this is the first study (in fact, the only study) that  has been able to gain access to the internal factory audits of major corporations and analyze them to show how things are  really working in the thousands of factories scattered throughout the developing world that  produce the goods we consume every day. These audit reports (data) coupled with  unprecedented access to over 100 factories supply several major brands creates a unique opportunity to shed light on and analyze current labor conditions and labor rights within today’s global supply chains.

2) Second, the book manuscript makes a theoretical contribution by exploring how regulation (both private voluntary regulation and state regulation) need to combine to tackle these labor problems, and how this unfolds in a world of shifting firm boundaries, dynamic supply chains, and growing efforts to complement traditional forms of regulation with emerging private forms of regulation.

3) Finally, the book makes a practical contribution by showing what works and what does not and suggesting pragmatic strategies for key actors (multinational corporations, transnational NGOs, governments, etc.)

An adaptation of his book can be read at Boston Review’s online forum dedicated to the subject- ‘Can Global Brands Create Just Supply Chains?’