Decent Work and Transnational Governance: Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives' Impact on Labour Rights in

This dissertation provides guidance for policy and research on how the enforcement of core labor standards in supplier factories of transnational corporations can be improved. The book not only performs a comparative impact assessment of three multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), but also develops an analytical model about the influence of "inclusiveness" on MSIs' effectiveness. MSIs are institutions of transnational governance. Several of them - founded in the international textile, garment, footwear, and sporting goods industry - address problems with labor rights violations in global supply chains that neither states nor transnational corporations have been able or willing to solve. The book asks to what extent different MSIs were successful in improving working conditions in supplier factories in developing countries. It performs an analysis of the International Labor Organization's Better Factories Cambodia Program, the Fair Labor Association, and the Foreign Trade Association of the German Retail Trade-Deutsche Gesellschaft f r Technische Zusammenarbeit (AVE-GTZ) project, using nearly 50 qualitative interviews. The book argues that the variation of degrees of effectiveness depends on the different approaches that underlie the work of each MSI: social dialogue, responsible competitiveness, or risk management. Dissertation.