The ILR Review invites submissions for a special issue devoted to public, private, and social labor governance in global production focusing on connections, intersections, and spillovers across arenas and issue fields. The guest editors are Chikako Oka, l’Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), Luc Fransen, University of Amsterdam, Markus Helfen, Hertie School Berlin, and Rémi Bourguignon, l’Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC).
A striking paradox is evident in labor governance in global production: Despite a growing array of public, private, and social regulatory initiatives, violations of labor rights and other social and environmental standards remain pervasive. Over the past three decades, academic work has flourished in this area, particularly regarding private regulation based on codes of conduct and social auditing (Locke 2013), often set by multi-stakeholder initiatives (Bakker et al. 2019). As the severe limits of private regulation have been laid bare (Kuruvilla 2021), however, we have seen a renewed interest in social and public governance (Anner 2021). Social governance includes union-driven efforts such as global framework agreements (Helfen and Fichter 2013; Bourguignon et al. 2020) and collective binding agreements, notably the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (Donaghey and Reinecke 2018; Oka et al. 2020). Social governance also includes worker-driven initiatives such as the Fair Food Program (Rosile et al. 2021) and other multi-party bargaining models (Blasi and Bair 2019). Meanwhile, we have seen a revival in “hard” legal instruments to regulate global production including social clauses in trade agreements (Marslev and Staritz 2023) and mandatory legislation (LeBaron and Rühmkorf 2017).
Yet much remains unknown and unexplained about how various actors and forms of regulation may intersect at different levels and shape labor conditions on the ground. To date, some scholars have examined how private, public, and/or social mechanisms may intersect during policy formation (Burgoon and Fransen 2018; Amengual and Bartley 2022), on the ground (Amengual and Chirot 2016; Bair et al. 2020), and across countries (Distelhorst et al. 2015; Short et al. 2020). Others have focused on the network and micro-level interactions at headquarters among Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers (Schüßler et al. 2022), audit firms (Fransen and LeBaron 2019), and investors (Monciardini and Conaldi 2019), as well as alliances and networks of unions (Lévesque and Murray 2010), civil society organizations (Zajak 2017), sourcing agents (Soundararajan and Brammer 2018), and social auditors at the point of production (Raj-Reichert 2020).
Various attempts to examine and theorize about these phenomena have been scattered across disciplines. The editors believe that cross-fertilization of various research traditions in social science and management should give us clearer and deeper insights into the realities of connections, intersections, and spillovers surrounding regulation of global production. In this special issue, therefore, the editors welcome theoretical and empirical contributions from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, covering micro, mezzo, and/or macro levels of analysis.
Scholars interested in contributing to the special issue should submit a full paper by October 30, 2024. Participation in the earlier workshop is not a requirement for full paper submission. Please refer to Manuscript Submission Guidelines: ILR Review: Sage Journals before submitting your manuscript online. Papers that are deemed of good quality but not selected for the special issue may be considered for publication in a regular issue of the journal. Prospective contributors are urged to consult any of the guest editors regarding preliminary proposals or ideas for papers.
For the detailed call, visit https://journals.sagepub.com/pb-assets/cmscontent/ILR/ILRR_Updated-Call-for-Papers_Special-Issue_Public-Private-Social-Labor-Governance_07-03-2024-1720035938.pdf