Social Auditing: Legitimising Global Brands’ Irresponsibility?

Business and politics are intimately intertwined in the global supply chain. There are increasing interdependencies between countries due to globalisation and free trade. Within this context, large global brands are salient political and economic actors. Recent trends have shown large-scale shifts of global production to weak economies which supply cheap labour. As a result, these brands wield considerable power in shaping the industrial practice of weak economies who are often dependent on them for revenue generation, foreign exchange earnings, infrastructure development and to sustain local employment. However, by virtue of their global footprint and presence, these brands are also under pressure to maintain their legitimacy in countries from which they source their products, and also in the countries where their products are ultimately being sold (Deephouse, et al., 2017; Bajde, 2019).