Economic globalization leads to the regional distribution of supply chain elements, which allows decreasing the item cost price but makes it difficult to control suppliers adequately. Despite numerous audits, the information is often biased, and the reports are usually delayed. The case of Kalh Gill and his initiative LaborVoices emerged to assure transparency in the global supply chain.
The idea of founding LaborVoices emerged not occasionally, it was a comprehensive vision on how to improve the working conditions and protect the workers’ rights. It evolved owing to the valuable experience obtained in the labor office of human rights where Gill was primarily concentrated on labor rights and corporate social responsibility. During his visits to the garment factories in Bangalore, Kohl Gill realized how far the working conditions are from the established national standards, and how human and labor rights of workers are violated in practice. By founding LaborVoices, Gill planned to create a database that collects information from the mobile phone-based survey. This data provided by the workers of garment factories could be analyzed and offered to various stakeholders further.
The information collected and analyzed by LaborVoices may attract such potential customers as brands, consumer guides, governmental agencies, suppliers, advertisers, and garment workers. Data collected by LaborVoices might be useful for brands as they could get the actual information about the current state of the factories because regular audits tend to provide outdated delayed results. Also, the governmental agencies and consumer guides might be potentially interested in the findings of LaborVoices to elaborate on human rights provisioning and inform the customers about the environmental and social impact of the particular company. Moreover, the information generated by LaborVoices could be extremely useful for suppliers, but it would be rather associated with the response towards blackmailing and a desire to protect the negative aspects from the publicity. Advertisers’ concern about the information is also evident – they can spread their messages directly to the target audience. Finally, the information gathered from some garment workers could be useful for others – they will get a broad understanding of the places with the best conditions, wages, and social packages.
Many garment factories in Bangalore do not adhere to the national standards and underpay their workers. The companies are targeted at higher profits, sometimes neglecting the fundamental principles of social and environmental sustainability. Kohl Gill’s idea of LavorVoices aims at the protection of labor rights and the improvement of working conditions. That is why “the revenue sources would not materialize if LaborVoices is unable to connect with the workers and gain their trust” (Roman et al. 12). When a large number of people contributes to the creation of content and information, this leads to crowdsourcing. The workers would benefit from LaborVoices, “because the service would make available to them information about specific factories and worker rights” (Roman et al. 12). As a rule, crowdsourcing business models are frequently complemented by advertising models to generate revenue.
From the case of Kohl Gill and his idea, it is evident that some great conceptions and intentions may be difficult to realize because of the ethical considerations or unexplored demand among the stakeholders. To make sure that the venture succeeds, it is essential to create a liable reputation, based on which more stakeholder groups might be involved.
Work Cited
Roman, Ronald M., et al. “LaborVoices: Bringing Transparency to the Global Supply Chain.” Case Research Journal, vol.34, no.4, 2014, pp.1-13.