Neither Global Nor Standard: Corporate Strategies in the New Era of Labor Standards

Abstract

Two multinational retail firms, IKEA and Wal-Mart, illuminate the implications of a new era of labor standards—focused on the transnational firm. Global labor standards are increasingly enforced through transnational corporation (TNC) adherence to voluntary codes rather than through national labor regulation. Nonetheless, privatized labor-standards regimes within TNCs continue to be influenced by the national market governance framework in the TNC country of origin. Although, in principle, labor standards are arrived at through global political processes, in practice they are applied in conjunction with TNC production and marketing strategies. The way in which corporate objectives intersect with labor practices is different from one TNC to another, depending in large part on political and regulatory influences in the country of origin of a particular TNC.