Abstract

This paper presents a matched pair case study of two factories supplying Nike, the world's largest athletic footwear and apparel company. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. On the surface, both factories appear to have similar employment (i.e., recruitment, training, remuneration) practices and they receive comparable scores when audited by Nike's compliance staff. However, actual labor conditions exist between these two factories. What drives these differences in working conditions? What does this imply for traditional systems of monitoring and codes of conduct? Field research conducted at these two factories reveals that beyond the code of conduct and various monitoring efforts aimed at enforcing it, workplace conditions and labor standards are shaped by very different patterns of work organization and human resource management policies.

Richard Locke is professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also faculty director of the MIT Sloan Fellows program and co-director of the MIT Italy program. His research focuses on economic development, comparative labor relations, and political economy.

Sponsored by the Program on Global Justice and the Stanford Humanities Center

The symposium is being organized by the Center's "Taiwan Democracy Project." It will feature participation from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other publicly funded as well as civil society efforts to assist democratic development internationally.

The symposium, which will be limited in size to facilitate extensive dialogue and exchange, has several purposes. One set of purposes is informational and analytical. We want to delineate and assess what new and smaller democracy promotion organizations are doing-and what they can do effectively-to support and advance democratic development around the world. To answer the latter question, we want to distill some of what the more established democracy assistance organizations have learned over the last two decades that can be of value in guiding the strategic thinking and organizational development of these new initiatives. How should such new and emerging foundations define their priorities, and what types of grants and activities are most likely to add value to existing efforts? What countries, sectors, and problems may provide, within each region, opportunities for new democracy assistance initiatives to leverage their limited resources into a higher impact?

Second, we would like to promote, in a modest and limited way, some interaction between academic studies of democratic development and the practical efforts to assist it. The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law has embarked upon a very ambitious study of how international influences affect democratic transitions and consolidation, and we would hope to inject some of what we are learning into the discussions-and most of all, to benefit from them.

Third, we want the workshop to be practically useful to the participants. We want to explore the possibilities for cooperation and joint effort among democracy promotion efforts, small and large, new and old. How can such newer and smaller initiatives acquire the information necessary to identify and evaluate potential projects and grantees? What opportunities may exist for sharing information about potential recipients of assistance? What other forms of exchange and interaction could help new and small assistance efforts to leverage their limited resources? How can the established democracy promotion organizations benefit from some of the "ground truth" that new initiatives may accumulate and the new methods that they may develop in their work?

DAY I: Thursday May 31

Morning Session (8:30 am - 12:30 am):

Introduction

Panel 1: Established Efforts to Promote Democracy: Evolution of Strategy, Priorities, and Programs

Panel 2: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Asia

Afternoon Session (1:30 pm - 4:45 pm):

Panel 3: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Eastern Europe

Panel 4: New Efforts to Promote Democracy--Africa

DAY II: Friday June 1

Morning Session (9:00 am - 12:15 pm):

Panel 5: Starting New Democracy Foundations

Panel 6: What Kind of Assistance Do New and Struggling Democracies Need?

Afternoon Session (1:15 pm - 3:00 pm):

Round Table Discussion: How to Measure Success?

Closing Comments