Does transnational private governance reduce or displace labor abuses? Addressing sorting dynamics across global supply chains

The attention of practitioners and scholars of private regulation of working conditions is focused on whether and how corporate buyers can help improve labor and safety standards in the factories that supply them by adopting codes of conduct, joining social certification schemes, participating in social audit processes, and financing safety improvements. I argue that more attention should be paid to the possibility that private regulation schemes – whatever degree of compliance they achieve – mostly result in a displacement effect or sorting dynamic that leaves the overall level of working conditions unchanged. I sketch a research agenda aimed at identifying the conditions under which a sorting dynamic can occur and at conceiving innovative private governance designs that could avoid it.