Brands as Labour Rights Advocates? Potential and Limits of Brand Advocacy in Global Supply Chains

Key Insights for Managers

While brands can pressure individual suppliers to improve their labor standards, they can also engage in “brand advocacy” by encouraging supplier country governments to respect the rights of union activists or to raise minimum wages. But when is such advocacy more likely to succeed, and thus be more worthwhile for brands to engage in? Based on three qualitative case studies in the Cambodian garment industry, author Chikako Oka identifies three criteria. First, brands are more likely to succeed in countries that already have channels in place to mobilize brand advocacy because these channels can combine individual brand efforts into one collective effort. For example, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) helped organize individual brand advocacy on a number of issues so that collective brand action reached government ears. Second, brand advocacy is more likely to succeed when the country’s political context is favorable, such as when labor standard issues are already at the forefront of political debates. For example, minimum wage issues were at the forefront of Cambodian politics when a group of brands, such as H&M, C&A, and Inditex advocated for higher minimum wages and pledged to pay more to their supplier factories. Third, supplier country governments are more likely to take action when their country heavily relies on brands’ business and fears losing it should they fail to act. These tend to be countries, such as Cambodia and Bangladesh, where exported garments (or other types of exported retail) make up a large share of their economy. These three factors can help managers identify which issues are more likely to be successfully advocated upon, and which countries are more likely to respond to such collective activism.