Critical Interventions for Sustainable Global Value Chain Communication: Suspicion, Critique, and Creative Engagement

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Today’s global economy is marked by the ubiquitous supply chain—an arrangement of production and services through networks of autonomous and/or semiautonomous actors, often physically distributed. From cell phone manufacturers in China to call centers in India, from independent coffee planters in Guatemala to garment maquiladoras in Mexico, the global supply chain represents one of the most cost-effective ways for large organizations to face “intense competition, particularly in highly price sensitive markets… [and to] deliver ever greater shareholder value” (Hale & Wills, 2005, p.13). At the same time, the supply chain remains highly contested and ethically charged, as corporate interests get entangled with issues of sweatshop labor, environmental exploitation, and domestic job loss. Critique is often focused at the lower end of such chains, where “subcontracting and the informalisation of employment relations takes advantage of social inequalities relating not only to levels of poverty but also to gender, age, ethnicity and migration” (p.235).

Business organizations address these issues—in order to assuage public criticism and advocate for ethical principles and values—through various corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, and claim to thereby become more “sustainable” in the long run. These include, most prominently, the establishment of codes of ethics concerning fair labor practices, ethical sourcing and environmental protection, among others. While some laud these practices as viable forms of self-governance and “the best way of changing [business] practices in depth and extensively along the supply chain” (Vaughan-Whitehead, 2010, p. 214), others argue that they have “done nothing to alter the facets of the global economy that cause the problem… in the first place.” (Hale, 2011, p. 13).

Accordingly, this panel features communication scholarship that asks crucial questions about the organizing processes underlying global supply chains—particularly related to the voices, exchanges and dynamics among nation-states and regulatory bodies, civil society actors, business organizations, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and grassroots communities. These questions include: What shapes the communicative genre and format of organizational practices in the supply chain context? How do broader social discourses of labor, the environment, and globalization manifest in various texts produced and promoted by business organizations and their challengers? Given the underlying power disparities at stake, especially in terms of access to discursive and material resources, whose voices are magnified, omitted, or distorted in supply chain communication? How does CSR and sustainability act to effect discursive closure, and how may we intervene to constitute truly sustainable global supply chains?

Sub Unit

• Organizational Communication

Chair

• Rahul Mitra, Wayne State U

Individual Presentations

• Corporate Social Responsibility on the Supply Chain: A Suspicious Reading - Zhuo Ban, University of Cincinnati

• Civil Society, Labor Watch, and Sustainable Production - Jing Jiang, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

• Love, Care, and the Westward Expansion: Foxconn’s Postcrisis Discourse and Organizational Change - Dongjing Kang, Florida Gulf Coast U

• Communicatively Enacting “Enlightenment” for Global Food Sustainability - Rahul Mitra, Wayne State U

• Is Apple Making the Invisible Visible? - Mahuya Pal, U of South Florida; Hannah Bush, U of South Florida

Respondent

• Oyvind Ihlen, U of Oslo