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Transition Towards Socially Sustainable Behavior? an Analysis of the Garment Sector

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Transition Towards Socially Sustainable Behavior? an Analysis of the Garment Sector A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bodenheimer, Miriam Working Paper Transition towards socially sustainable behavior? An analysis of the garment sector Working Paper Sustainability and Innovation, No. S07/2018 Provided in Cooperation with: Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI Suggested Citation: Bodenheimer, Miriam (2018) : Transition towards socially sustainable behavior? An analysis of the garment sector, Working Paper Sustainability and Innovation, No. S07/2018, Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI, Karlsruhe, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0011-n-4943482 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/178227 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu Working Paper Sustainability and Innovation No. S 07/2018 Transition towards Socially Sustainable Behavior? An Analysis of the Garment Sector Miriam Bodenheimer Acknowledgement: This work was supported by funding from the German Federal Ministry of Re- search and Education under grant number 16I1642. Table of Contents Page 1 Introduction and Background ....................................................................1 2 Methodology and Data Sources ................................................................4 2.1 Quantitative Data .........................................................................4 2.2 Qualitative Data ...........................................................................7 2.3 Expert Interviews .........................................................................7 3 Quantitative Analysis of Public and Industry Attention ..........................9 3.1 Media Coverage and Public Awareness ......................................9 3.2 Industry Attention ....................................................................... 17 4 Systematic Process Analysis of Historical Events ................................ 19 4.1 United States ............................................................................. 20 4.1.1 Phase 1 (1981 - 1992) ............................................................... 20 4.1.2 Phase 2a (1992 - 1994) ............................................................. 21 4.1.3 Phase 3a (1995 - 1999) ............................................................. 23 4.1.4 Phase 2b (2000 - 2004) ............................................................. 30 4.1.5 Phase 3b (2005 - 2007) ............................................................. 31 4.1.6 Phase 2c (2008 - 2011) .............................................................. 33 4.1.7 Phase 3c (2012) ......................................................................... 34 4.1.8 Phase 4 (2013 - present) ........................................................... 35 4.2 Europe ....................................................................................... 40 4.2.1 Phase 2 (1989 - 2004) ............................................................... 40 4.2.2 Phase 3 (2005 - 2011) ............................................................... 43 4.2.3 Phase 4 (2012 - present) ........................................................... 46 4.3 Key Developments since 2016 ................................................... 51 5 Behavioral Analysis: Results from Expert Interviews .......................... 53 5.1 Corporations .............................................................................. 55 5.1.1 Corporate Awareness ................................................................ 55 5.1.2 Corporate Behavior ................................................................... 57 5.2 Consumers ................................................................................ 62 5.2.1 Consumer Awareness ............................................................... 62 5.2.2 Consumer Behavior................................................................... 65 6 Discussion: Status of the Transition ...................................................... 67 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 71 8 Publication bibliography ......................................................................... 72 Transition towards Socially Sustainable Behavior? An Analysis of the Garment Sector 1 1 Introduction and Background From its historical origins to today, the garment industry has always been a stepping stone for further development and industrialization. Especially the "cut- make-trim" (CMT) sector is commonly one of the first areas of export-oriented industry in which countries with low levels of development can enter the interna- tional market, because it has low entry requirements with regard to technology, equipment and skill level. Even in the 21st century, the production of clothing continues to rely heavily on low-skilled manual labor. Garment manufacturing is also a highly mobile industry, which can easily move from one country to the next, or "cut and run", when wages and benefits rise too far in a particular coun- try. Given these basic parameters, the garment industry has long been associated with social sustainability issues (SSIs) such as low wages, long hours, lacking building safety and overall poor working conditions. Moreover, these poor condi- tions have, both historically and in the present, always affected "others" from the perspective of consumers - be it domestic garment workers too poor to buy the clothing they manufacture or employees in far-away countries who are easi- ly forgotten at the point-of-sale in well-lit European and North American stores. However, through the work of activists, civil society and the media, the garment sector has faced increasing pressure over the past two decades to combat these "sweatshop" conditions. In the following case study, we will therefore examine whether and to what de- gree a behavioral transition towards greater social sustainability is taking place in the garment sector. We define behavioral transitions as normatively driven changes in a conglomerate of structures, culture, norms and practices that are a key element of long-term transitions towards greater sustainability. Our analysis uses the Model of Behavioral Transitions to Sustainability (BTS), a heterodox and heuristic approach that is described in greater detail in the first working paper of this series (Bodenheimer 2016b). The BTS Model, shown in Figure 1, expands the operationalizability of the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) (Geels, Schot 2010) by combining it with the Cyclical Dialectic Issue Lifecycle (C-DILC) model (Penna, Geels 2015; Geels, Penna 2015) and incorporating two behavioral models, the stage model of self-regulated behavior change (SSBC) (Bamberg 2013) and the corporate comprehensive action determination model (C-CADM) (Lülfs, Hahn 2014). The C-DILC model describes the devel- opment of public attention and concern to a specific trigger event or issue and 2 Transition towards Socially Sustainable Behavior? An Analysis of the Garment Sector how this in turn affects the actions of corporate and governmental actors. The two behavioral models are used to gain insight into the processes that take place during a behavioral transition to sustainability and, of particular im- portance, the points where it is likely to fail or succeed. Phase 1 2 3 4 5 Increase in public Landscape awareness & concern Intensified Concern Regime Issue Resolution Trigger Event Window of Opportunity Legend: Behavioral Change Decline of old MLP = green regime C-DILC = red Niche SSBC/C-CADM = blue Escape & Denial Return to Apathy Time (not to scale) Figure 1: Model of Behavioral Transitions to Sustainability (Bodenheimer 2016a) In practice, the BTS model consists of a mixed-methods approach that includes both quantitative and qualitative empirical indicators. For the quantitative analy- sis, we examine media coverage of SSIs with a focus on the garment sector to create a general overview of the issue lifecycle. This data is then supplemented with a qualitative systematic process analysis of historical events (Hall 2006), which allows us to uncover causal relationships and examine interactions be- tween various stakeholders in greater detail. The two behavioral models are used as the foundation for expert interviews, which build upon the insights gained from the historical analyses to examine the current status of the transition in each sector from the perspective of relevant stakeholders.
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