The Promise and Perils of Private Voluntary Regulation: Labor Standards and Work Organization in Two Mexican Garment Factories

This paper is part of a larger project on globalization and labor standards organized by Professor Richard Locke of M.I.T.. In addition to the results presented in this paper (some of which appear as well in Monica Romis, "Beneath Corporate Codes of Conduct: What Drives Compliance in Two Mexican Garment Factories," (Masters Thesis, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, M.I.T., 2005)), the project entailed field research in China, Turkey, Europe and the United States as well as systematic analysis of Nike’s factory audits of working conditions in over 800 factories in 51 countries.What role can private voluntary regulation play in improving labor standards and working conditions in global supply chain factories? How does this system relate to and interact with other systems of labor regulation and work organization? This paper seeks to address these questions through a structured comparison of two factories supplying Nike, the world’s largest athletic footwear and apparel company. These two factories have many similarities - both are in Mexico, both are in the apparel industry, both produce more or less the same products for Nike (and other brands) and both are subject to the same code of conduct. On the surface, both factories appear to have similar employment (i.e., recruitment, training, remuneration) practices and they receive comparable scores when audited by Nike’s compliance staff. However, underlying (and somewhat obscured by) these apparent similarities, significant differences in actual labor conditions exist between these two factories. What drives these differences in working conditions? What does this imply for traditional systems of monitoring and codes of conduct? Field research conducted at these two factories reveals that beneath the code of conduct and various monitoring efforts aimed at enforcing it, workplace conditions and labor standards are shaped by very different patterns of work organization and human resource management policies

World-system position and democracy, 1972–2008

Global levels of democracy are higher than ever before, and democratic principles are now institutionalized as a world cultural norm. Nevertheless, a number of countries continue to feature governing systems that restrict political rights. Against this backdrop, I revisit traditional claims by world-system theory regarding the impact of the core/periphery hierarchy on national political systems. In doing so, I draw attention to the uneven character of democratic growth across world-system zones. Using an updated trichotomous measure of world-system position, and drawing from Freedom House and Polity IV ratings of democracy, I construct an annual time-series dataset producing a maximum of 5445 observations across 161 countries during the 1972–2008 period. Employing a series of random-effects tobit models with year-by-covariate interaction terms, I compare democratic growth among nations in the core, semiperiphery, and periphery. The results indicate significant gaps in democracy between core and non-core nations that are not dissipating over time, and that are perhaps growing slightly larger. In a series of robustness checks, I find that using an alternative measure of world-system position, an alternative measure of democracy, and an alternative estimation strategy produce similar results. In sum, despite the global spread of democracy, world-system boundaries remain fundamental in hindering cross-national convergence.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Horizontal distribution of trees in managed, 80-years old Norway spruce stands in Slawno Forest District

The objective of this research was to describe the horizontal distribution of trees in the managed Norway spruce stands located in the Sławno Forest District. The knowledge of that stand feature may be useful for the forest management in natural as well as in artificial stands. This paper presents the analysis of the spatial pattern of trees belonging to the different diameter classes in two separate stands. Majority of the living trees in both stands characterised with random spatial distribution. Trees with small (≤20 cm) dbh were localised in groups the most often

Silvicultural and economic evaluation of Scots pine plantations establishment using container-grown and bare-root seedlings

Presented study compares of the performance of Scots pine plantations established with container−grown and bare−root seedlings. Silvicultural assessment was based on the comparison of survival rate, defect differentiation as well as height and diameter growth of plants depending on the type of the planting material used for renewal. Results show faster growth of the container−grown plants but their slightly lower survival rate. The economic evaluation was based on the comparison of total costs of establishing and managing both types of plantations depending on the initial density

Do natural processes at the juvenile stage of stand development differentiate the spatial structure of trees in artificially established forest stands?

Structural diversity is one of the most interesting phenomena that have been studied by forest ecologists and practitioners. Amongst the different characteristics of forest structure, spatial diversity of trees and their attributes seem to be very important. The more spatially structured a population is, the higher its diversity in terms of size and species richness. Because most forests in Europe are managed and were artificially established, they are subjected to conversion processes turning them into more complex systems. The approach presented here aims at elucidating whether natural processes, such as self-thinning, can cause the self-differentiation of spatial structure in artificially planted stands. Our analyses focused on untended Scots pine and pedunculate oak stands in the juvenile phase of development and were based on spatially explicit structural indices for positioning and size differentiation (diameter, total height and crown length). The obtained results indicate that live trees were dispersed more or less regularly. Unlike the anglebased index, which mostly indicated randomness in tree location, a distance-based index showed clear regularity. We also found that the distribution of tree attributes auto-correlates to tree location as indicated by significantly lower index values compared to values resulting from random reassignment of the examined attributes. This low degree of spatial differentiation is further confirmed by the distribution of indices in differentiation classes. Our results allow us to conclude that, in the case of light demanding species (pine and oak), natural processes do not increase spatial diversity of the stand, although, both species showed a certain degree of deviation in this respect

Spatial diversity of Douglas fir [Pseudotsuga menziesii [Mirbel] Franco] stands planted on fresh mixed coniferous and fresh mixed broadleaved sites

The paper describes the spatial diversity of 30−year old Douglas fir stands established by planting on fresh mixed coniferous and fresh mixed broadleaved sites. Analysis was carried out with reference to the horizontal structure (type of tree distribution over an area) and the spatial diversity of living trees size (dbh and height). Easily measurable structural indices as Clark−Evan aggregation index, contagion index and the height and diameter differentiation indices were used