Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability in the Clothing Industry

Business Ethics Responsibility
and Sustainability

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Key challenges associated with the Corporate responsibility and sustainability........................3
Best practice within clothing sector in the context of ethical and moral issue............................6
Recommendation for the businesses in clothing sector...............................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Corporate social responsibility can be defined as the company’s commitment for
practicing social and environment sustainability. It is a self-regulating business that supports
business to be socially accountable. CSR activities gives huge contribution in improving brand
image of the company in it’s sector. The main goal of the CSR activity is to build sustainability
of the business in the global market as well as improves customer’s lifestyle. in this report will
discuss about CSR associated issues in the clothing industry. Further this report will explain
about best practices of clothing retail companies to deal with moral and ethical issues through
multiple examples of clothing companies which runs their businesses at global level in the
clothing sector.
MAIN BODY
Key challenges associated with the Corporate responsibility and sustainability
The clothing and apparel industry is spread at an extremely wider level where the operational
activities are exploited and implemented intensively. Implementation and integration of the
corporate responsibility in the collective practices of company helps in the adoption of better
operational policies collectively which improves the productivity ultimately (Strähle and Müller,
2017). There are a number of challenges that are identified regarding the corporate social
responsibility aspect in the clothing industry and these can be illustrated as follows:
 The most prominent challenge is the compliance with the laws made by the labour
standards where the employees have unique duties and require different skills sets as
well. In these scenarios it becomes difficult to manage the different employees and
implement proper safety and protection against hazards as well. The corporate
governance here can be identified as the prominent challenges related to the CSR factors
in the clothing industry.
 Conflict of interest is another challenge in the CSR where the different stakeholders in
the company have different expectations and needs. In the clothing sector, the consumers
often expect that the organisations should go beyond the measures that have been
implemented by the government and the transparency should be increased relatively
(Todeschini and et.al., 2017). The shareholders, investor etc. on the other hand prefer that

there should be a certain level of privacy or secrecy implemented by the management of
the company. This often creates a challenge before the management authority of the
company.
 Often, due to intensive competition that exists in the clothing industry, brand tends to cut
down on the operational costs that are incurred by setting up manufacturing outlets in
those areas where labour is cheaply available and production is cheaper (Boström and
Micheletti, 2016). This however reduces the chances of employment and revenue
generation for the country in which it is operating mainly. Additionally, the profit
maximisation objectives also make it difficult for the companies to fulfil the CSR
objectives of the company.
 There are a variety of quality standards that have been set up by the government and
legislations which the companies operating in this clothing industry are required to follow
such as international standards compliance like ISO 9001, ISO 14001 etc. and the
supplier’s code of conduct has also been developed which can help in implementation of
better practices (Garcia-Torres, Rey-Garcia and Albareda-Vivo, 2017). The concept of
conducting social audit also affects the overall operation of the CSR practices in
organisation.
 The sourcing decisions that are being made by the companies also affect the overall CSR
compliance of the organisations where the consumers have now become increasingly
concerned regarding the different sources from which the brands are collecting their raw
materials. For instance, evaluation that no child labour is being promoted in those
countries, or the discriminations based on gender, colour etc. is not being implemented.
Overall it can be concluded that the challenges that the clothing industries face in the
implementation of the CSR activities and the different aspects that are associated with it are
diverse in today’s era when the different associated aspects have become so diverse.
Apart from corporate responsibility, the concept of sustainability has also gained
prominence over time. It has now become necessary to comply with different aspects associated
with sustainability as well so that the overall fulfilment of job roles is more comprehensive. The
different challenges that can arise in the sustainability compliance by the clothing industry are as
follows: