Transnational Labour Governance in Global Supply Chains: Asking Questions and Seeking Answers on Accountability

Abstract

The “language of accountability” has featured prominently in transnational labour governance. For decades now, activists have called on brands and lead firms in the developed world to take more responsibility for working conditions in their supply chains. Private regulatory initiatives are implicitly premised on transparency and market and reputational mechanisms that ostensibly enable consumers, investors and civil society actors to hold companies to account for their labour practices. Yet, there continues to be much debate and uncertainty in international and national fora about the meaning and mechanisms of accountability in global governance. In this chapter, we seek to explore the way in which conceptions of “accountability” in transnational labour governance have shifted during the recent past.

As part of this analysis, we consider how accountability has been constructed and contested across different initiatives and through distinct conceptual frameworks. In undertaking this analysis, we apply a set of critical questions, namely: Who is accountable to whom? For what should they be held accountable for? Through what mechanisms or processes is accountability to be assured? By what standards is the putatively accountable behaviour to be judged? What are the potential effects of finding that these standards have been breached? Adopting an explicit focus on the way in which accountability has been applied – both normatively and in practice – reveals new insights into the pluralistic and complex relationships between regulators, intermediaries, targets and beneficiaries.