infonet-economy

Recent disclosures of excessive working hours, inadequate compensation and violations of health and safety issues have put emerging market producers - as suppliers to traders, brands and retailers (i.e., buyers) from developed countries - in the spotlight. Consequently, emerging market suppliers are increasingly confronted with minimum social requirements - often set by a social standard - which developed country buyers pressure them to comply with. Yet, little is known on the determinants of emerging market supplier social performance against a social standard's minimum requirements. Building on the literature of aspiration-driven behavior, which suggests that performance relative to aspirations (i.e., attainment discrepancy) influences performance corrections, we investigate adaptations of emerging market supplier social standard compliance attributed to attainment discrepancy between their social performance and organizational aspirations. For this purpose, we rely on social audit reports of the Business Social Compliance Initiative focusing on 90 suppliers from Bangladesh, China, India and Turkey in the clothing and textile industries, which have completed at least four full audits between 2003 and 2012. Our results suggest that social performance below the aspiration level leads emerging market suppliers to improve social standard compliance whereas social performance above the aspiration level guides emerging market suppliers to deteriorate social standard compliance. These findings imply that emerging market suppliers are unlikely to meet a social standard's minimum requirements on a continuous basis.