Beyond the Workplace: “Upstream” Business Practices and Labor Standards in the Global Electronics Industry

Scholars have argued that poor labor conditions in global supply chains are due to inadequate government regulation or ineffective (poorly designed) private compliance systems. Employing a unique data set and a case study of Hewlett-Packard and its supply chain, this article argues that these interventions—no matter how well intentioned and designed are insufficient because they focus solely (or primarily) on the locus of production, focus on the factories producing for global buyers. Although this focus on the workplace ostensibly makes sense, given that this is where most labor standards violations are manifested, the reality is that many of the workplace problems we observe in global supply chains are, in fact, the product of a set of policies and practices designed and implemented upstream by global buyers and their lead suppliers.