Suppliers' Compliance with MNCs' Codes of Conduct: Behind the Scenes at Chinese Toy Suppliers

摘要

Despite increased academic and practitioner interest in codes of conduct, there has been littleresearch into the actual compliance of suppliers in developing countries with the codes ofconduct of multinational corporations (MNCs). This paper addresses this lack by analysingChinese suppliers’ level of compliance with Swedish toy retailers’ codes of conduct. Based onunannounced and unofficial interviews with employees of Chinese suppliers, the study showsthat all of the nine studied suppliers breached some of the standards in the toy retailers’ codes,with over two thirds of the suppliers not complying with the majority of the studied standards.While there are different explanations of this lack of compliance, the main explanation seemsto be that Chinese suppliers successfully deceive toy retailers’ monitoring organisations bydecoupling the formal monitored part of their organisation from the actual operational part oftheir organisation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how to increase compliance withMNCs’ codes of conduct.