Moral purpose, economic incentive and global trade : why new business models are needed

Globalization has occurred in various forms over the past century, yet only recently has it become daily news. This evolving process has created numerous underlying tensions that are not well understood. While western society has tried to address these tensions, it has sometimes mishandled them. In this thesis, we examine one such area; the belief that globalization creates opportunities for significant labor exploitation and why it is necessary, in the absence of government regulation and enforcement, to set social codes for companies sourcing products in developing countries in order to prevent this mistreatment. The thesis examines whether these codes are actually effective in accomplishing their stated objective of improving social conditions and if not, what plan could better accomplish this goal. It is divided into five chapters; the first is a review of five central globalization trends that frame the social code discussion. The second and third chapters look at the negative publicity that exposed labor problems overseas and assesses whether any of the known global actors care enough to cure the problems. Starting with the historical development of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) set up as a response to these problems, we then examine the codes they promulgated.

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Samel, Hiram M

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard M. Locke.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37257

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37257