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The Impacts of Stakeholder Pressures on Workplace Compliance in the Bangladeshi Apparel Industry

Sarker, Zafar Waziha
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1574780270227769

Abstract Details

2019, Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, Apparel, Textiles, and Merchandising (Education).
Textiles and apparel are the largest industrial sector in Bangladesh, which accounts for 83.49% of the country’s total export and employs 4 million workers. Although the sector has made significant progress in the global market, it has also faced negative publicities due to notorious industrial incidents in 2012 and 2013. The disastrous incidents exposed long-term negligence of workers’ safety in its manufacturing sites. Beginning with the attentions from human rights organizations, various groups, such as consumers, government, and retailers and brands, have shown their concerns and taken initiatives to improve unsafe working conditions. The apparel retailers and brands began requiring a workplace compliance certificate from the factories. To assure the safe workplace, Bangladesh government passed and enacted related laws for the industry. However, the effectiveness of these stakeholder forces in influencing the factories to be compliant still remains unanswered because, 1) the scientific research in the area has been scant, and 2) existing studies are limited to qualitative approaches. The primary goal of this study was to understand the importance and effectiveness of the stakeholders impacting the workplace safety issues in Bangladesh. The purpose of this study was to examine the impacts of the pressures from various stakeholders regarding workplace compliance in the Bangladeshi apparel sector. The stakeholder theory provided the framework for this study and identified the legitimate and influential stakeholders of the workplace compliance issue. It was hypothesized that the level of workplace compliance is positively related to the magnitude of pressures from buyers, workers, government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and competitors. On the other hand, due to a high cost in implementing initiatives, the level of compliance was hypothesized to be negatively related to the owner's pressure. A dual data approach, matching a primary data set with a secondary, was used. The source of the secondary data was the Accord’s open-source reports that specify the current compliance statuses of registered apparel factories (i.e., compliant, under remediation progress, and non- ompliant). An online survey to the Bangladeshi apparel factories was conducted to collect the primary data set, which was combined with matching factories’ compliance status for data analysis. Responses from 43 compliant and 45 `in-progress' factories were analyzed using SPSS. The level of perceived pressures from the stakeholders were relatively high in general. A binary logistic regression test exhibited seemingly negative impacts of the pressures from NGOs, workers, and government on workplace compliance and positive impacts of the pressures from owners, buyers, and competitors. However, the relationships were statistically insignificant. A series of t-tests indicated that in-progress factories felt more pressure from workers than on the compliant factories. The government and NGOs also showed their significance in explaining workplace compliance. This study was the first quantitative study investigating the factors of workplace compliance in Bangladesh. This study contributes to the field of textiles and apparel by addressing one of the imminent ethical issues in the apparel supply chain management. The findings of the study provided the interested parties insights and implications to effectively deliver messages related to workplace compliance and strengthen the participation of certain stakeholders.
Haesun Park-Poaps (Advisor)
80 p.
Social Research
Workplace compliance; Bangladeshi apparel industry; Stakeholder pressure; Stakeholder theory

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sarker, Z. W. (2019). The Impacts of Stakeholder Pressures on Workplace Compliance in the Bangladeshi Apparel Industry [Master's thesis, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1574780270227769

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sarker, Zafar Waziha. The Impacts of Stakeholder Pressures on Workplace Compliance in the Bangladeshi Apparel Industry. 2019. Ohio University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1574780270227769.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sarker, Zafar Waziha. "The Impacts of Stakeholder Pressures on Workplace Compliance in the Bangladeshi Apparel Industry." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1574780270227769

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.