Responsibility for the third world factory: limits of eurocentric CSR and making room for the state

Abstract

On the 24th of April 2013, one of the worst industrial disasters in global history occurred when the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Dhaka killing over 1100 people. The collapse focused renewed attention on the conditions in the third world factories and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in developing countries. Spirited appeals were made by international labour rights groups for increased CSR from corporations that were sourcing their products from these factories and for greater efforts to ensure compliance to safety norms by factories. Some activists even suggested that companies have a responsibility to improve ‘the societies’ in which their products are made (Meiers 2014). These appeals raise the interesting question of what exactly are ‘these societies’, ‘these businesses’ which the TNCs should help improve? I hope to answer the question at least partially by questioning whether the responsibility of improving outcomes and decent work for workers and societies in the third world can be exclusively left for the prevailing eurocentric model of voluntary code-based TNCcentric CSR to address. In this essay, I also suggest an active role for the state in achieving such outcomes. To the extent that this essay argues for ‘making room for the state,’ it makes essential departures from the way in which CSR has developed in the eurocentric model. This essay is primarily an analysis of the discourse of CSR and labour compliance and therefore draws on the existing understandings and published work on labour standards, compliance and CSR. In addition, to build a critique of this discourse from the outside, this essay uses data on the medium, small and micro enterprise (MSME) sector in India from the various reports and research studies.