The big issues
Doug Cahn is a man on a mission.
The principal of US-based corporate responsibility consultancy TheCahnGroup, the 50-something businessman has dedicated nearly 30 years of his working life advising businesses on how to implement corporate labour standards.
Formerly the vice president of human rights programs at global sporting giant Reebok International, Cahn is a founding board member of advocacy group The Fair Labor Association and also sits on the committee on Corporate Responsibility of the World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry.
But today the man standing at the podium at Hong Kong's Prime Source Forum addressing a crowd of some 300 of the world's biggest retailers and manufacturers admits he is worried. Concerned not just about giving a speech about one of the most keenly debated toIn years gone by, he says, brands and retailers created codes of conduct - along with every extensive plans to implement them - in order to mitigate risk and to protect brand reputation.
But while this was a step in the right direction, at the time there was very little consultation between the different companies that were developing codes. The problem was worsened by the fact that if talks were held it tended to be personality rather than institution-based.
"It was a case of 'I know someone in that company, so I'll give them a call'", Cahn says.
But while these early collaborations managed to find limited success through the establishment of such advocacy groups as the Ethical Trading Initiative, the Social Compatability group and the Fair Labour Association, all involved admitted there was still room for improvement.
Today, while each group and code has attempted in its own way to serve the broader industry and stakeholder needs, no single initiative has succeeded in defining the way forward for the industry to the satisfaction of all.
Cahn admits he is worried because the lack of collaborating in those early years now means the apparel industry is in a period of "significant change and "increasing frustration" when it comes to the issue of compliance.
"I say increasing frustration because of our investments in monitoring, education and training, capacity building, outreach to the social investment community - all of these things, including of course reaching out to our critics - have not always, or even often, resulted in the desired changes we expected that we would see in factories.
"I say considerable change because what was good 10 years ago is not good enough today. Because the scope of impacts that companies are expected to be responsible for has broadened, and because our increasing frustrations demand that we engage in new and different activities."
And it would seem little has changed since those early attempts at addressing the problem.
According to Cahn, one of the biggest problems facing the global apparel industry is the fact there is little harmonisation between the many programs that exist and few "if any" efforts at standardisation when it comes to social responsibility and compliance. Cahn says the industry also has an "all-over-the-place" set of standards with respect to monitoring practices and protocols.
He argues the only way to get the industry out of this glut, is to increase or enhance industry collaboration and to create formal systems to help drive industry standardisation forward.
Factory accountability is also a problem, he says, with stakeholder pressure forcing brands and retailers to accept accountability for factory workplace conditions.
"The dilemma here is that factories don't tyCahn says buyer integration is another problem clouding the issue.
With company departments created to service the perceived need to implement codes of conduct, easy victories were achieved.
"We didn't want initially to be part of our sourcing and production departments within corporations because we needed our own identity, we needed our own independence in order to formulate standards that made sense to stakeholder communities. Of course the dilemma is that now sometimes what corporate responsibility professionals needs comes into conflict with competing company needs."
Speaking at the same forum, Clothesource publishing director Michael Flanagan subscribed to a similar theory.
Flanagan, whose company holds on the world's largest collection of intelligence on price comparisons, supplier capabilities and national resources for nearly 100,000 factories across 100 countries, says the whole issue of compliance is very simple to describe but difficult to do anything about.
"It is never altogether clear what the motives of people operating on compliance are. Not every auditor is a paragon of honesty. It's practically known for some audit to work a 'certain' way because money has changed hands. Not every activist is motivated by making life better for the poor of this world. There are some activists around who, frankly, are motivated by their own personal careers and by taking bribes. Not every corporate initiative is designed to transform the world for the better. Some companies like to do things just because they think it looks good."
So, having identified the problems, where lies the solution?
Cahn says that in order to move forward with each of these problems, retailers and manufacturers must be willing to accept change - in particular the gap between expectation between the label's country of origin and the manufacturer's production environment.
"We need to take measures to close that gap. This is likely to mean a reduction in traditional monitoring but not a reduction in retail or manufacturing investments in these issues. It will call on us to challenge core business assumptions and to make difficult choices.
For each business decision we make we have to ask ourselves 'what is the impact of that decision on corporate responsibility'.
"If we fail to create a new paradigm for the next 10 years that has learned from the past 10 years we will have individually and collectively invested poorly and achieved little."