Summarize the case and give your thoughts on CODES OF CONDUCT – MONITORING HRM PRACTICES AROUND THE…

Summarize the case and give your thoughts on CODES OF CONDUCT – MONITORING HRM PRACTICES AROUND THE WORLD
An issue that has been somewhat overlooked in the IHRM literature is the need to monitor the HRM practices used in a variety of social, legal, and regulatory contexts. An increasingly common way to address these issues is with a code of conduct. This is a policy document that provides rules and boundaries and stipulates acceptable standards of behavior. A well-structured and thought-through code of conduct can provide a fair, consistent, and valuable set of signals to those inside and outside the organization – in other words, the core values of that organization. It is clear therefore that a code of conduct needs to be ethical and underpinned by integrity. Whilst these values can be argued as being subjective, such codes provide guidelines on how the organization is expected to operate.
This is of particular relevance to MNEs involved in cross-border alliances in industries such as textile, clothing, and footwear (TCF) and other consumer goods industries such as electrical goods where MNEs do not establish their own manufacturing operations. A critical issue in the management of the international supply chain is ensuring that quality standards are met. This has been problematic for some MNEs with global brands such as Nike, Levi Strauss, Benetton, Reebok, and Adidas. A major management challenge for these firms has been the reaction of Western consumers to allegations of unfair employment practices used by their subcontractors in countries such as India, Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Indonesia, El Salvador, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and the Philippines.
Various MNEs have been accused of condoning work practices such as the use of child labor, long working hours for minimal pay, and unsafe working environments – conditions that would not be permitted in the home countries of leading Western MNEs. Public uproar in the 1990s resulted in various actions by governments, the United Nations (UN) and NGOs to try to enforce codes of conduct also for subcontractors through their multinational partners. Some multinationals, with corporate reputations and valuable brands at stake, quickly introduced their own codes of conduct. These codes of conduct included, for example, acceptable working conditions, no child labor, and minimum wages.
There is now a universal standard, similar to the ISO 9000 quality standard, called the Social Accountability 8000, whose principles are drawn from the UN human rights conventions. However, as the recent Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh in April 2013 illustrated, whilst health and safety issues were central to the deaths of over 1,100 employees and the serious injury of 1,000 workers, industrial relations issues also came to the fore in subsequent investigations. Evidence emerged of employees working over 100 hours a week with two days off a month and standard wages in the range of US$10 to US$13 a week.