Global North and Global South Evaluations of Post-Rana Plaza Safety Initiatives

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on international supply chain governance through a comparative analysis of Global North and Global South media evaluations of supply chain initiatives in the Bangladesh ready-made garment industry, 2013 – 2019. It presents an analysis of media coverage of the initiatives over three periods (inception, operationalization, transition). It focuses on three main forms of evaluation: the relative amount of coverage given to the initiatives over the three periods (prominence); the normative assessment of the initiatives, whether positive, negative, neutral, or mixed (valence); and the focal issues of evaluation (themes). It finds significant variation in coverage. Global North media focused on coverage in the initiatives’ inception phase with reference to the themes of responsibility, liability and ownership. In contrast, Global South media focused on the operationalization of the initiatives with reference to themes of remediation and compliance. We argue that these findings powerfully reflect imbalances in the de-sign of supply chain governance systems.