Beyond social auditing - Towards communicative empowerment and self-governance of factory workers and suppliers in the textile industry

Social auditing approaches to sustainability in the textile industry predominate in worldwide practice, but research now makes clear that a lot of structural non-compliance is recidivist: that is, it is repetitive and pernicious. The discussion of going beyond auditing towards distributed communicative governance among participant organizations in the textile industry supply chain is becoming both attractive and urgent. The key emerging issue is the question of how and by what means insight, knowledge and collaboration between the chain of suppliers and their employees can be procured, if not through well-established audit programs.