Dissertation

A Dialectical-­‐Relational Critical Discourse Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Aftermath of Bangladesh Garment Factory Disasters

Module ET979

Sook Tin Chin

1363597

Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of MA in English Language Teaching (Studies & Methods) Centre for Applied Linguistics University of Warwick September 2014

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my highest gratitude to my advisor Dr. Sophie Reissner-­‐Roubicek, for your motivation, enthusiasm, immense knowledge, and continuous support of my dissertation study, Thank you for being a wonderful mentor for me. Your advice on both the research as well as my personal growth have been invaluable. Without your time, attention, patience, supervision, thoughtful feedback and constant advice, this dissertation would not have been possible.

My sincerest gratitude also goes to my personal tutor Peter Brown. Thank you for being my pillar of support throughout the academic year, always so approachable and warm at heart. Thank you for having the smallest of tempers and the biggest of hearts. I sincerely thank you for being a parent figure to all of us and making a beautiful impact on our lives.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank my lecturers, tutors, colleagues and friends who have supported me throughout the course of this MA in ELT dissertation. I am thankful for all the aspiring guidance, invaluably constructive criticism and friendly advices. I am sincerely grateful to you all for sharing your truthful and illuminating views on making this dissertation as well as my past other works better and greater.

I would like to thank my amazing family members for the nurturing love, support, and constant encouragement I have gotten since the day I was born. I would like to thank my parents, Steven and Esther, for supporting me to pursue my interest in English Language Teaching as well as Applied Linguistics here in University of Warwick. Thank you both for you have not let a single second pass without loving me unconditionally. Life would not have been as colourful without my brothers, Wui and Yang. Your support, encouragement, motivation and unwavering love have carried me through the many ups and downs in life.

And above all, I praise God, the almighty for providing me this opportunity to study in University of Warwick and granting me the capability to proceed successfully. Thank you, Lord, for Your many blessings which have made me who I am today.

Thank you, Sook Tin Chin

Abstract The years 2011-­‐2013 saw the largest garment industry disasters on global record, which is a wake-­‐ up call to companies regarding the credibility of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR refers to business decision-­‐making by corporates or organizations in relation to ethical values, compliance with legal requirements, and respect for people, communities and the environment. However, CSR is often seen as a contradiction on its own terms and a mere lip-­‐service response to the threats anti-­‐corporate campaigns pose to companies’ license to operate. Most scholars in the field now seem to recognize the disparity between what is said and what is done in CSR reports. This study will draw upon the work of Kallio (2007) to explore one of the three ‘grand taboos’ of CSR discourse he identifies, that is, the taboo of continuous economic growth in relation to CSR. It then takes the dialectical-­‐relational approach to critical discourse analysis proposed by Fairclough (2009), with a focus on intertextuality and presupposition, to analyse CSR reports produced by 10 corporations who were linked to the recent garment factories disasters in Bangladesh, as well as reports by two social justice campaigners who also reacted to the incidents. The study focuses on the discursive strategies used by companies in their CSR reports, and how they position themselves in relation to other stakeholders, as well as how these constructions are contested by the campaigners for social justice. The findings suggest that in the aftermath of the disasters, the companies’ purpose in CSR reporting has more to do with managing reputation, rather than a concern for external stakeholders’ interests. Comparatively, the social justice campaigners’ reports exemplify a more desirable relational stakeholder approach to CSR. Implications are discussed and recommendations are made for future research.

Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Labour rights in violations in the Ready-­‐Made Garments Sector .................................................... 1 1.2 Corporate Social Responsibility: An introduction ........................................................................... 1 1.3 Research objective ........................................................................................................................ 2 1.4 Structure of the dissertation .......................................................................................................... 3 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 5 2.1 The labour dimension in CSR ......................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting ............................................................................. 6 2.3 Contemporary CSR discourse ......................................................................................................... 7 2.4 Addressing taboos in CSR reports: Labour injustice and/or continuous economic growth? .......... 10 2.5 Comparison Studies: Analytical approaches to analysing CSR discourse ....................................... 11 2.5.1 Content Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 12 2.5.2 Rhetorical Analysis and Discourse Analysis ............................................................................. 13 2.5.3 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ............................................................................................. 15 2.5.3.1 Dialectical-­‐ Relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis .............................. 17 2.6 Research gap ............................................................................................................................... 18 3 METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................................ 20 3.1 Research questions ..................................................................................................................... 20 3.2 Theoretical approach ................................................................................................................... 20 3.2.1 Dialectical-­‐ Relational Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ..................................... 21 3.2.2 Intertextuality .......................................................................................................................... 21 3.2.3 Presupposition ......................................................................................................................... 21 3.3 Data ............................................................................................................................................ 22 3.4 Analytical framework .................................................................................................................. 24 3.4.1 Overall analytical framework: Dialectical-­‐Relational Approach to CDA in studying dialogue between texts ....................................................................................................................................... 24 3.4.2 Textual Features Analysis: Description, Interpretation and Explanation levels in studying individual texts ..................................................................................................................................... 26 3.4.3 Categories of linguistic analysis: Transitivity, mood, and modality ......................................... 26 3.4.4 Benoit’s (1997) Image-­‐restoration strategies .......................................................................... 27 4 ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................. 28 4.1 Stage 1: Define research questions which relate to the ‘social wrong’ ......................................... 28 4.2 Stage 2: Drawing upon relevant theories in a transdisciplinary way ............................................. 28 4.2.1 Multinational corporations as allies in developing countries’ socio-­‐economic development: the case of Bangladesh ........................................................................................................................ 28 4.2.2 Multinational corporations as predators in fuelling labour injustice in developing countries 29 4.3 Stage 3: Analysis of conjunctures in relation to the ‘social wrong’: Deadly factory disasters in Bangladesh ............................................................................................................................. 30 4.4 Stage 4: Description and Interpretation of primary data set: 10 companies’ CSR reports in the aftermath of Bangladesh factories disasters ............................................................................ 31 4.4.1 Companies’ image-­‐repair discursive strategies ....................................................................... 32 4.4.2 Companies’ subject position for victims .................................................................................. 35 4.4.3 Companies’ subject position for other retailers ....................................................................... 37 4.4.4 Companies’ subject position for suppliers ............................................................................... 39

4.5 Stage 5: Description and Interpretation of secondary data: reports from social justice campaigners as possible resource for change ............................................................................................... 41 4.5.1 Social justice campaigners’ subject positions for companies and marginalized groups .......... 42 4.6 Stage 6: Answers to research questions ....................................................................................... 45 4.6.1 Research Question 1 ................................................................................................................ 45 4.6.2 Research Question 2 ................................................................................................................ 45 4.6.3 Research Question 3 ................................................................................................................ 46

5 Discussion ................................................................................................................. 47 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 51 6.1 Contribution of the study ............................................................................................................ 51 6.2 Limitations of the study ............................................................................................................... 51 6.3 Recommendations for future research ........................................................................................ 52 References ...................................................................................................................... 53

1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Labour rights in violations in the Ready-­‐Made Garments Sector Labour rights violations are perhaps most strongly associated in people’s minds today with the deaths of low paid garment industry workers in South Asia, in situations where health and safety concerns are seemingly sacrificed to a profit imperative. In the wake of the deadly Tazreen Fashions building fire and Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh in the years 2011-­‐2013, debates over the ‘race to the bottom’ for cheap labour have re-­‐emerged and sparked serious questions about the apparel industry’s use of sweatshops and cheap labour (International Labour Rights Forum 2013: para.1; Labour Behind the Label 2014: 10; War on Want 2014: 2). The recent ‘sweatshop cry for help’ messages found stitched into dresses (Aspinall 2014: para.1), the deadly apparel industry disasters, as well as clashes between many corporations and society have caused the industry to struggle with image and identity. Public perception of the industry as monopolistic, greedy, and in the aftermath of the disasters, insensitive to labour rights, has brought it under threat.

The Ready-­‐Made Garments (RMG) sector remains an entry-­‐level employment sector as one of the most labour-­‐intensive industries additionally often found in developing countries (Afrin 2014: 70).

Due to its large scale of employment in the developing world, issues such as cost competitiveness make the RMG sector highly vulnerable, impacting the social conditions of millions of workers whose livelihoods depend on it (International Labour Organization 2014: para.2). In most developing countries, labour markets are constantly being criticised for their persistent informality, low levels of productivity and pay, and insufficient access to social security and employment benefits, along with inequalities in outcomes for women, youth and specific groups in society (International Labour Organization 2013: v). This has accordingly led to greater demands for scrutiny of the apparel companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR), especially the labour dimension in CSR.

1.2 Corporate Social Responsibility: An introduction Often referred to as “corporate citizenship” or just “corporate responsibility,” (Maguire 2011: 1), CSR implies that organisations, especially transnational corporations, are responsible for 1

their wider impact on local communities and global societies, for example in pushing initiatives to improve labour rights in global supply chains. CSR is concerned with how enterprises affirm their principles both in their own internal methods and in their interaction with other stakeholders, operating businesses that meet or exceed compliance with the law (Douglas et al. 2004: 388; International Labour Office 2006: 1).

The societal approach of CSR has paved a new way for further advancement in social justice, calling for corporations to fundamentally rethink their positions in the societies in which they are playing a big part (Van Marrewijk 2003: 97). On the one hand, the idea of creating ‘shared value’ has found appeal, as it supports companies’ abilities to create private value for themselves, which in turn creates public value for societies (Rangan et al. 2012: 1); but on the other hand, proponents query corporations’ motivations for CSR, asserting that it is nothing more than a public relations exercise aimed at restoring troubled corporates’ tarnished image (Cooke and He 2010: 355; Corporate Watch 2006: 10; Kallio 2007: 165).

The notion of CSR is thus situated uneasily at the intersection between labour justice and economic growth, and been subject to widely different portrayals. At one extreme it has been portrayed as “a failing discipline” (Blowfield 2005: 173; Visser 2010:1) ,“a waste of time” (Frynas 2005: 581), and at the other extreme as “the social license to operate” (Williams et al. 2007: 133) or the “permission to enter new markets” (McElhaney 2009: 35). However, CSR is not reducible to such dualistic portrayals. Such polarized ways of discussing CSR do not recognize or consider the underlying contradictions that emerge when corporations attempt to discursively frame their social responsibilities (Dhanesh 2014: 159). This gives rise to the aim of this study, which is to examine the CSR discourse in companies’ CSR reports, by analysing how corporations construct subject positions for themselves in relation to society. The research objective and focus of the study will be further discussed in the following section.

1.3 Research objective Assertions that CSR is essentially a public relations exercise in damage limitation have, however, not gone unaddressed. There is now a growing literature that critically engages with CSR discourses to understand, expose and ultimately resist social inequalities driven by irresponsible corporations.

However, this substantial number of prior studies mainly investigated the environmental 2

aspect of CSR, focusing on sectors and global companies who hold most responsibility for major environment crises, such as the oil and gas sector, the forestry sector, the mining industry, or corporates such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP (see Coronado and Fallon 2010; Frynas 2005; Livesey 2001; Jenkins and Yakovleva 2006; Kurchania and Rathore 2014). Relatively few have actually addressed the social aspect of CSR, especially in exposing labour injustice in developing countries led by capital power.

Thus, the present study seeks to fill this gap in the literature on CSR, with a research objective to examine the way labour injustice in Bangladesh’s Ready-­‐Made Garment industry is represented by those who perpetrate it. More specifically, this study looks into the strategies companies have used in image repair (Benoit 1997), and how they construct themselves, the victims, the other retailers involved in the disasters, and the suppliers as a reaction to the crisis and its consequences. A selection of 10 CSR reports, averaging 30 pages each, released by apparel companies involved in the disasters will be studied; along with two reports by social justice campaigners namely Berenschot [International] and Centre for Policy Dialogue Bangladesh (2013) as well as The Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University (2014) that were released in reaction to the incidents.

The present study also aims to fill a gap in terms of methodological approach, by drawing on Fairclough’s (2009: 162) dialectical-­‐relational approach to critical discourse analysis from a ‘transdisciplinary’ perspective. This perspective brings together different disciplines and theoretical-­‐analytical frameworks in the hope of thereby producing richer insights into the different societal fields examined, which include deliberation about facts, practices and values (Chiapello and Fairclough 2010: 256; Fairclough 2009: 163). It assembles diverse disciplinary resources and sees dialogue between them as a source for theoretical and methodological development of each of them (Fairclough 2005: 53; Fairclough 2009: 163). The way this methodological approach is incorporated into design of the study will be further explained in the Methodology chapter.

1.4 Structure of the dissertation The following chapter reviews the literature on CSR, focusing on the labour dimension and the ‘taboo’ of continuous economic growth. It then addresses different approaches to the study of CSR discourse and concludes by introducing the dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA as 3

proposed by Fairclough (2009) and outlining its suitability for addressing the research gap. Chapter 3, Methodology, presents the research questions, describes the data selected for analysis, explains the dialectical-­‐relational approach in more detail and sets out the analytical framework. In Chapter 4, Analysis, the data will be analysed using a dialectical-­‐-­‐relational approach to CDA. Chapter 5 presents a discussion of the results of the analysis, and Chapter 6 presents the implications and recommendations for future research.

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter starts with a discussion of problems faced by the labour sector in developing countries, and the perceived roles of corporates in exercising their CSR in dealing with the labour issues. It goes on to discuss how corporates communicate their CSR strategies or achievements as a result of changing societal expectations. Contemporary CSR discourse, and how it is socially constructed by multiple social actors is then addressed. The focus then narrows to the notion of coexistence between labour justice and economic growth, which in relation to CSR has been styled as the taboo of continuous economic growth (Kallio 2007). This underpins the research theme of this dissertation, by looking at how companies construct subject positions for themselves and others through companies’ CSR reports, as well as how social justice campaigners construct subject positions for the companies. The remainder of the chapter reviews previous studies of CSR, grouped in terms of different analytical approaches employed, including content analysis, rhetorical analysis and discourse analysis. After highlighting the feasibility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) for analysing CSR discourse the chapter concludes by introducing the dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA as proposed by Fairclough (2009) and outlining its suitability for addressing the research gap.

2.1 The labour dimension in CSR The difficulties faced by labour law in developing countries are widely recognized, as they are often faced with obstacles which are far more formidable than those of the advanced economies (Afrin 2014; Lau 2009; Sharma 2009). These hindrances include low educational levels, poverty, ineffective institutions, and inadequate enforcement resource (Cooney 2010: 349). As Pava and Krausz (1995: 3) point out, enforcement of law is limited in terms of what can be accomplished, due to reasons such as the time lag between when a problem is recognized and when the legislature can pass a law to solve the problem, as well as limitations concerned with making and implementing the law. This suggests that the law is primarily a reactive institution (ibid.: 3). Stone (1975: 94) maintains that, until new laws are passed, a great deal of damage, some of which is irreversible, can be done.

Hence, the emergence of CSR is seen by some as a panacea to help promote community development or labour justice (Esau 2012: para. 4). CSR activities in developing countries often 5

cover social services that would be seen as the government’s responsibility in developed countries (Berniak-­‐Woźny 2010: 279). CSR initiatives have assumed great importance, in the hope that they can further the implementation of labour standards by acting as an alternative form of regulation to provide incentives and develop good governance (Cooney 2010: 352; Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland 2008: para 1). Many apparel industry initiatives are often advertised as CSR measures, and Cooney (2010: 352) further argues that the market power led by major international retailers might be deployed to “punish recalcitrant suppliers”.

However, the truth is a far cry from the empty CSR promises many corporations have made. It seems that CSR initiatives in the apparel industry are in part to compensate for regulatory failures.

In spite of numerous CSR campaigns or claims that companies have cleaned up their acts, problems such as forced labour, low wages, excessive hours of work, discrimination, health and safety hazards, psychological and physical abuse, lack of awareness of workers’ rights, as well as lack of worker representation for negotiations with management still persist (Arnold 2013: para. 1; Dickson et al. 2009: 6), clearly demonstrated by the deadly collapse of Rana Plaza. These are issues that apparel firms must address. One of the ways to be monitored is by reporting and resolving instances of abuse when they are observed (Kozar and Connell 2013: 317).

2.2 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting Under the pressure of changing societal expectations, the majority of corporations are starting to intensify their CSR communication through CSR reports to keep a formal record of their CSR activities. This is to keep stakeholders informed about companies’ social and environmental performance, as well as managing potential conflicts and presenting legitimacy claims (Maguire 2011: 2). CSR reports have been commented on for their “ standalone sustainability” (KPMG 2008: 14; Wadhwa and Pansari 2011: 48), as these annual documents are publicised and visible (Neu et al.

1998: 268). owever, communicating CSR is perceived to be an extremely difficult task, as CSR goes beyond corporations’ traditional fields of responsibility about which they are accustomed, and comfortable, to communicate about (Schmeltz 2014: 2). The more companies expose their ethical and social ambitions, the more likely they are to attract critical stakeholder attention (Morsing and Schultz 2006: 323; Ashforth and Gibbs 1990: 177). A study done by Morsing et al. (2008) reveals that the public does not favour companies who communicate their CSR messages too loudly (108).

This runs the risk of being perceived as “clumsy, nervous or overacting actors” (Ashforth and 6

Gibbs 1990: 177). Corporations that fail to meet societal expectations of CSR may lose their legitimacy, and subsequently their survival will be threatened. Hence, big corporations that are prone to be on the receiving end of activist pressure are more likely to produce CSR reports as a way to make stakeholders aware of their activities and possibly buffer criticism (Hendry 2006: 5).

However, according to Schmeltz (2014: 235), CSR cannot be effectively communicated if it is not naturally present in and part of the corporate identity.

This is why CSR reports often serve multiple purposes and thus vary in the information provided, presentation, intended audience, and overall quality (Davis-­‐Walling and Batterman 1997: 865). CSR reporting practices are often adaptive to different local contexts, which can be attributed to government policies, cultural differences and stage of economic development (Douglas et al. 2004: 5; Sobczak and Martins 2010: 445). In other words, although the discourse surrounding CSR is shaped predominantly by the business community (Burchell and Cook, 2006: 123), others groups of social actors also shape CSR discourses (Buhr and Grafström 2007: 15), whereby discourse is able to exercise power in a society because it institutionalizes and regulates ways of talking, thinking and acting (Jäger and Maier 2009: 35).

2.3 Contemporary CSR discourse In general, previous research has outlined how CSR discourse is shaped by organizations or individuals; for example: corporates themselves (Bastin and Ellis 2011: 294; Kaplan and Levy2008: 433), business press and media (Buhr and Grafström 2007: 15; Siltaoja 2009: 191), governmental agencies or international governmental organisations (Baddache and Morris 2012: 1; Martins and Sobczak 2010: 445), non-­‐ governmental organizations (NGOs) (Henriques 2001: 44; Ruggie 2004: 512), consumers (Micheletti and Stolle 2003: 749), investors (Schueth 2003: 189), or consultants (Windell 2007: 34). These studies reveal how CSR discourse is a shared way of apprehending the world socially constructed by multiple social actors (Dahlsrud 2008: 6; Dryzek 2005: 9).

This is why discourses are bound up with political power, as it is a sign of power that actors can get the discourse to which they subscribe accepted by others (Dryzek 2005: 9). There are currently two different scholarly views on which group dominantly controls the discourse of CSR: on the one hand, some see CSR discourse as predominantly shaped by the business community as an agent of empowerment and exploitation (Banerjee 2008: 51; Dhanesh 2014: 157; Driver 2006: 338; 7

Silberhon and Warren 2007: 352); on the other hand, some view CSR discourse as an open conversation engaging broadly participative societal dialogue.

The former perspective sees the discourse of CSR as predominantly driven by corporates’ narrow business interests, with an intent to construct a favourable public image of their social conscience and benevolence towards a broadly conceived, homogenous group of stakeholders (Coronado and Fallon 2010: 667). However, the key silent stakeholders, who are already marginalized and disempowered, are often deliberately excluded, in order not to “challenge the primacy of shareholders” (Belal and Cooper 2011: 654). Driver (2006: 338) asserts that it is the flawed assumption of corporates’ “unidimensional, stable and simplistic” perception of self that has led to the very limited conception of CSR, that is, in the narrowly defined terms of self versus non-­‐self, business versus society. As corporate self-­‐values are nested in discourse (Schmeltz 2012: 9), this conditions the perceptions and values of those who are subject to them, such that some interests are advanced and others suppressed (Dryzek 2005: 85). As Dahlsrud (2008: 1) argues, this bias towards specific interests has hindered the development of the CSR concept.

On the other hand, the latter perspective recognizes a greater tendency towards an ethical and sociological approach in the CSR discourse, which has allowed civil society groups to reinterpret CSR discourse from their own perspective (Burchell and Cook 2006: 123, 54). One of the most dominant assertion of influence is by the Global Reporting Initiative’s (hereafter GRI) Reporting Guideline, a framework for voluntary reporting to promote the comparability of corporate sustainability reports.

For example, the GRI’s guideline for Apparel and Footwear Sector Supplement includes performance indicators such as “Incidents of non-­‐compliance with overtime standards” and “Incidents of the use of child labor” for disclosure purposes (Global Reporting Initiative 2000: 4).

This provides a platform for a broadly participative societal dialogue, as well as illustrates how different social actors can access different discourses to generate meanings or hinder the enactment of particular strategies (Brown et al. 2009: 571; Hardy et al. 2000: 1228).

The discursive change and adaptation of CSR discourse also goes hand in hand with major crises, such as natural disasters, global financial events or organizational misdeeds. For example, Livesey’s (2001) study offers insight into Royal Dutch/ Shell Group’s CSR discourse in light of two environmental disputes the company faced, revealing the “language games” or discursive contests engaged in by the company and its critics (59). The crisis led Shell to move from a taken-­‐for-­‐granted 8

discourse of economic development towards cautious adoption of sustainable development discourse. In other words, from the exercise of an economic development discourse which reflects the economic model and its institutional relationships within, Shell hereafter adopted a sustainable development discourse in reaction to activists’ calls for environmental justice. As Livesey (2001: 59) describes, Shell is “assuming to speak with and for nature, and for the right to life in all forms, now and in the future”. Shell’s critics, such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International, also drew on alternative discourses to Shell’s, introducing dissident voices that queried and challenged Shell’s fundamental identity and rationality (ibid.: 59). This discursive contest engaged in by both parties reveals a dialectical tension between different social groups whom are in contention to preserve their interest through adaptation of discourse Further evidence that the debate around the fundamental appropriateness of CSR has been reignited was provided by Bastin and Ellis (2011), whose study on the impact of the UK economic downturn on CSR discourse showed that most social actors, especially the business press, have been challenging companies’ ability to maintain the ‘luxury’ of CSR and asking if there is a need to bring about its end (298). And it seems likely that as Schmeltz (2014: 4) posits, the continuous process of capturing and responding to changes will be more intense in the wake of new CSR concepts. This shows the significance of discourse as a mechanism that can bring about changes, by which concepts are challenged, policies are confronted and long-­‐term action is set.

In reaction to the ethical and sociological approach towards CSR, a few dominant streams have been identified within the CSR discourse (see Itänen 2011; Harper 2001 ). Firstly is the ‘business discourse’, which exemplifies CSR as contribution to business success, as well as positioning the business as good in itself: for example Nokia claiming CSR as “a key part of our business strategy” or Philips asserting CSR as “an additional driver of growth” (Itänen 2011: 78, 80). Secondly is the “caring discourse”, which interprets corporates’ identity in more caring terms, underlines corporates’ strong commitment towards common societal needs and addresses marginalized stakeholder concerns, such as Xstrata’s commitment to “identifying the concerns” of the communities (ibid.: 83, 86), or Grundfos’s recognition of the human aspect of working life: employees “are not just resources like machineries, buildings and capital” (Nielsen and Thomsen 2007: 37). Thirdly is the “sharing discourse” that calls for future engagement from other social actors, for example Philips seeking “constructive dialogue and the opportunity to engage with” the supply chain and beyond (Itänen 2011: 94). Similarly, Reynolds and Yuthas (2008: 48) 9

propose the implementation of “moral discourse” in CSR reporting, drawing upon Habermas’ theory of communicative action for more morally-­‐justifiable and democratic outcomes. This includes five propositions: generality which maintains that discussion should be open to all interested parties; autonomous evaluation which suggests participants should have opportunity for full expression of interests; role-­‐taking among participants to view a situation from others’ perspectives; transparency among participants in which every party must reveal their goals and intentions relevant to the issue; and power neutrality which suggests that discussion must be free from coercion.

All in all, CSR discourse is still the subject of a confrontation between divergent views, identified by Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 14) as the ‘hybridisation of discourse’, which is the effect of other texts and other styles or registers in texts and interactions. Hybridisation of discourse is expressed by social actors in various forms through dialogues, negotiations and struggles, as well as reflecting the transformation and colonisation of one discourse by another (Benwell and Stokoe 2006: 115; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 14). With such shared terms and hybridisation of discourse, this offers ostensibly radical opportunities for boundaries to be blurred, the interface between business and society to be reshaped, and multiple voices to be presented (Livesey and Kearins 2002: 248).

2.4 Addressing taboos in CSR reports: Labour injustice and/or continuous economic growth?

A central aspect of this dissertation merges with the work of Kallio (2007) who identified three ‘grand taboos’ of CSR discourse (165). Taboos are topics which are particularly sensitive and problematic (ibid.: 165), and that they are often discussed “between the lines” (ibid.: 167), leaving the delicate issues “under erasure” (Parker 2003: 202). It has often been argued that subtle, almost silent, strategies are effective at communicating CSR, as they reduce scepticism and help build credibility around a difficult topic area (Schmeltz 2012: 111; Morsing and Schultz 2006: 323).

However, taboos are potential windows for social change: as taboos break, social reality changes (Kallio 2007: 167). Every process of imbalance can lead to change (Riegel 1976: 690), and so in this way, open discussion about taboos could challenge the status quo (Kallio 2007: 166). The focus of the present study is one of the three taboos identified by Kallio, the taboo of continuous economic growth in relation to CSR (ibid.: 169).

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The taboo of continuous economic growth lies at the heart of the ideological divide between those who advocate an economic model of CSR and those who advocate an ethical model of CSR (Driver 2006: 337; Kallio 2007: 169; Windsor 2001: 225). For the former doctrine, wealth creation dominates the conception of responsibility. It treats profit maximization as the prime responsibility to maximise shareholder value (Friedman 1970: 125) as well as path to social welfare improvement such as employment creation and poverty alleviation, although the thirst for wealth seeking is often wrapped within a responsibility rhetoric (Afrin 2014: 70; Windsor 2001: 225). On the other hand, the latter ideology argues that corporations should look beyond economic performance and undertake CSR for ethical reasons alone (Ennals 2011: 144). However, as Kallio (2007: 165) insists, corporate crises such as Enron fraud and BP oil spill testify that the belief in corporate goodness is still “nothing other than naïve”, yet the impossibility of the coexistence of CSR with wealth maximising has been silenced. The discreet and silent treatments reveal how asymmetrical the communication between companies and disempowered, silent stakeholders are, as communication will always take place on the companies’ terms (Schmeltz 2012: 30).

Kallio (2007: 165) posits that the critical potential of the CSR field remains underdeveloped as a consequence of the taboos. Hence, the notion of coexistence between labour justice and economic growth needs investigation through a critical lens in a dialectical approach; in other words, the study of contradictions and the unity of opposites (Baxter 2004: 183; Riegel 1976: 689). The multiple tensions across both fields, through which assumptions, meanings and practices challenge each other (Montgomery and Baxter 1998: 159) need to be investigated, as well as underlying tensions, apparent ambiguities and contextual choices, which cannot be reduced to dualities because of the indeterminacy and instability of intersections (Blume and Blume 2003: 790).

2.5 Comparison Studies: Analytical approaches to analysing CSR discourse Scholarly analytical research on CSR communicating or reporting has been conducted within a number of different frameworks. Prominent among these are content analysis, which focuses on the volumes of disclosures on particular topics (see Deegan and Rankin 1996), and, for studies on discourse which move beyond the above wholly quantitative approach, rhetorical analysis (see Castelló and Lozano 2011; Higgins and Walker 2012), and discourse analysis (see Bhatia 2012; Buhr and Reiter 2006; Gill and Broderick 2014; Livesey 2002b). In sections 2.5.1 to 2.5.3, studies adopting these analytical approaches are reviewed.

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2.5.1 Content Analysis Content analysis has been widely used in the field of CSR research as it is seen as the simplest form for accessing organisations’ CSR disclosures and addressing them in codes (Giannarakis et al. 2011: 36; Milne and Adler 1999: 237; Stevens 1994: 65). However, scholars have questioned content analysis on account of the difficulty in assimilating different meanings across different contexts into its “priori coding instrumentation” (Hopf 2004: 31; Neuendorf 2004: 34). As King et al. (1994: 94) explain, since meaning is bounded by text, meaning cannot be assumed to be the same across time and place. An example of such a study is Deegan and Rankin’s (1996) investigation of reports by 20 Australian companies prosecuted for breach of environmental law. The authors categorized the environmental disclosures across the various reports as “positive” and “negative”, and found that the total disclosure of positive information – such as “maximise the use of recycled fibre” – greatly outweighed negative disclosures such as “inability to rehabilitate mine sites following closure” (ibid.: 66). They concluded that there was a significant increase of favourable environmental disclosure surrounding environmental prosecution (ibid. 62). However, the categorizing and defining of “positive” and “negative” disclosures is not sensitive; as Burke (1968: 445) puts it, language is a “species of action, or expression of attitudes, rather than an instrument of definition”. Content analysis fails to recognize “anomalies and absences” (Hopf 2004: 31) as evidence too, unable to ‘read between the lines’ and uncover what is not said.

In addition, the authors point out that the results “confirm previous studies” and are also “consistent with US research” in that Australian companies will only provide environmental information favourable to corporate image, and will continue to do so (Deegan and Rankin 1996: 62). This positivistic approach of using statistical analysis for hypothesis testing (Hardy et al. 2004: 20) demonstrates that content analysis has less consideration for the contexts which have produced the texts, as well as the state of the situation after texts are produced. The conclusions drawn may be generalized only to the texts included in the sampling process, and there is a lack of meaningful inferences about the relationships and impacts implied in the study. Words become meaningful in context, in that meaning and identity itself are not fixed, but contextually and relationally derived (Livesey 2002a: 122).

As Hardy et al. (2004: 20) point out, content analysis often decontextualizes the text itself from the intentions of the producer of the text, or of the reaction of the intended audience. Hence, to

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deconstruct various forms of communication to reveal the underlying assumptions made, one may move beyond labelling parts of a text and turn to discourse analysis, which gives a better grasp of the mental, interactional and social strategies participants engage in (van Dijk 2013: para. 8). The section below addresses studies that adopted this more contextualised approach.

2.5.2 Rhetorical Analysis and Discourse Analysis Moving beyond the quantitative approach of content analysis, some scholars have employed rhetorical analysis as well as discourse analysis to study the discourse in the field of CSR. Rhetorical analysis is able to consider “the persuasive aspects of language” (Burke 1962: 567), and beyond that, the methods people use to identify with each other in understanding things from one another’s perspectives (ibid.: 25). However, rhetorical analysis is relatively limited as compared to discourse analysis, as discourse analysis provides greater focus on the fine-­‐grained analysis of interplay of texts (intertextuality) and of discourse (interdiscursivity), and is thereby able to illuminate the nature of socio-­‐political struggle and reveal the dialectical relationship between texts and macro-­‐sociological issues (Livesey 2002a:117).

Further, in analysing CSR discourse that represents the complex, contradictory, oppositional forces of the CSR construct, and exemplifies the highly complex and intertwined processes of the global flow of ideas within which social actors are actively navigating and shaping the discourse of CSR (Dhanesh 2014: 158; Schmeltz 2012: 13), the study of pattern-­‐seeking study arguably has to go beyond rhetorical analysis’s examination of persuasive and identifying features. Discourse analysis is able to study what is in CSR reports that not only involves power or “legitimate mind control, for instance persuasion” but more specifically, the abuse of power, that is, the notion of manipulation (van Dijk, 2006:359).

Livesey’s (2002a) study provides a useful account of the differences between rhetorical analysis and discourse analysis, by using both approaches to study four ExxonMobil advocacy advertisements in The New York Times. Through the lens of rhetoric, Livesey found that ExxonMobil had altered the advertisements’ linguistic meanings and relationships, reshaping their own and other actors’ identifications and identities, “blurring and confusing the capabilities, responsibilities and effects” of agents (such as environmentalists or consumers) and acts (such as government regulations) (ibid.: 127-­‐8). As Livesey (2002a: 127) illustrates in her study, ExxonMobil identified with the readers by 13

causing division1, turning “environmentalists and governments into incompetent meddlers who would do no good … environmental protection into the enemy [and] business and technology into saviours”. Livesey also found that ExxonMobil was treating its own identity as “protean”, drifting from persona to persona (such as “the responsible citizen” , “the scientific powerhouse and technology leader ”, and “the vulnerable human entity in a natural scene too complex to be encompassed”) to variously identify with different public interests (ibid.: 128). As Suddaby and Greenwood (2005: 36) discuss, the strategic use of persuasive language attempts to align multiple identities to cultural views, and exploit contradictions embedded in dominant institutional logic to further corporates’ self-­‐ interest.

From the rhetoric perspective, ExxonMobil advertorials represent an example of “corporate issues management” (Livesey 2002a: 140). However, through discourse analysis, the analytical perspective shifts from the focus on language per se (ibid.: 122) to a more critical approach in mapping out the contours of ongoing socio-­‐political conflict (ibid.: 140). For example, as Livesey (ibid.: 133) points out, discourse analysis of the exploitation of “health/harm binary” throughout ExxonMobil’s argument not only reveals the alteration of linguistic meaning as discussed above, but also points towards the wider tension between environmentalist and business interests. The health/harm binary is, according to the author (ibid.: 133), a contradiction and discursive struggle which is taken advantage of by various social actors. The metaphor is often employed by corporates or the press from a commercial perspective, suggesting that an economy is in a state of ‘health or sickness’, as a natural and balanced state is ‘healthy’. This health/harm binary metaphor inherently hints at a subtle disciplinary force (ibid.: 133). The environmentalists, on the other hand, call to bring to light the ‘unhealthy’ aspects of development such as the ‘poisons’ produced by industrial processes, in which the environmentalism discourse has thus “disrupted the natural order” of the economy, as mentioned earlier. In addition, the health/harm metaphor is also employed by environmentalists in the notion of “spiritual health of human well-­‐being” and in advocating a “blueprint for survival” (ibid.: 133-­‐4). As suggested by Livesey (ibid.: 134), the ground-­‐breaking Brundtlant Report 1987 by

1

‘Division’ is the ironic counterpart of identification (Burke 1950: 547), in which the congregation and separation is to identify with some target in response to the divisions of society (Burke 1973: 264; Cheney 1983: 145).

14

United Nations has captured these twin aspects of environmental and economic health, articulating the discourses to depict sustainable development as having a key role in bridging the gap between both ends of health.

The joint discourse of economic development and environment has henceforth, as suggested by Livesey (2002a: 134), helped the emergence of new subject identities such as ‘responsible capitalism’ and ‘reform environmentalism’. This reveals the domination of social events through the use of intertextuality, or the dialogical properties of texts, in which the language use can change the individual discourses and thereby the social and cultural world (Hopf 2004: 31; Jørgensen and Phillips 2002: 74). This dominance of discourse, if manipulated non-­‐democratically, may lead to power abuse and social inequality (van Dijk 2006: 359).

Livesey’s use of alternative methodological approaches illustrate how both rhetorical and discourse analyses have related yet distinct ways to illuminate the role of CSR discourse in maintaining organizational legitimacy. However, discourse analysis aligns with the purpose of this dissertation in that it helps to facilitate a series of interdisciplinary approaches in understanding the many different social domains and conflicts (Livesey 2002a: 141; Jørgensen and Philips 2002: 1).In other words, while rhetorical analysis focuses on the micro level, intricate features of language and its often polarizing effects in specific controversies, discourse analysis is able to shed light not only on the oppositional rhetoric, but also the macro level, dynamic, political and institutional conflicts embedded in the notion of CSR development (Livesey 2002a: 142; van Dijk 2001: 354). The section below discusses how a further development of discourse analysis, CDA, has been more particularly adopted for investigating CSR discourse.

2.5.3 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) As discussed in Section 2.5.2 on the two different views on discourse, the micro-­‐level approach sees discourse as a local achievement, analytically distinct from other levels of social reality, whereas on the macro-­‐level of discourse, the focus of interest is on the institutional, organisational and societal context that forms ideas and discourse in a particular period of time (Alvesson and Karreman 2000: 1126-­‐7). Alvesson and Karrmean (2000: 1127) maintain that one methodological problem in discourse analysis is how to move beyond specific empirical material that is “typically linguistic in its character” to addressing what is beyond the text functioning as a powerful ordering force.

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As proposed by Engeström (1999:172) and van Dijk (2001: 354), CDA is able to fill this gap between fragmented isolated discourse and larger social analysis. Although the various approaches to CDA differ in a number of ways, they share a commitment in going beyond linguistic description and uncovering social inequality (Forchtner 2010: 18; Pennycook 1994: 121; van Dijk 2001: 354) which can ultimately challenge truth claims (Elliot 1996: 65). This aligns with the objectives of this study in examining the way labour injustice in Bangladesh’s Ready-­‐Made Garment industry is represented by those who perpetrate it. Its emphasis is able to highlight the challenge that lies within CSR discourse, as actors compete in a dialectical struggle over power and dominance (Burchell and Cook 2006: 124).

One example of CDA approach to analysing CSR discourse is Coronado and Fallon’s (2010) study on the responses of two Australian mining companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, to the interests of aboriginal communities who are affected by the companies’ mining operations. As the CDA of the companies’ websites revealed, the companies have manipulated CSR discourse to construct a homogenous representation of aboriginal peoples for their own strategic purposes (ibid. 666). For example, companies loosely referred to the aboriginal people as “local communities” and only vaguely defined who the key stakeholders were, applying stakeholder theory only on broadly conceived homogenous indigenous issues to conjure up a good image (ibid.: 671). Additionally, companies’ claim that “Indigenous peoples belong to the land”, using a rhetorical worldview to exclude the indigenous group from mining agreements for their lack of Western-­‐style “legal” ownership of the land, sees a deliberate manipulation of indigenous people by the companies (ibid.: 667). Coronado and Fallon (2010: 679) demonstrated how the mining sector appropriated CSR to be “yet another colonising strategy”.

On the other hand, however, Coronado and Fallon (2010: 679) assert that CSR contributions cannot be altogether be dismissed, as they are still an open and genuine opportunity for corporate contributions to social justice. As the authors suggest, the various aboriginal groups have to be clearly identified instead of being treated as one homogenous body, besides giving the power to aboriginal peoples to define their own appropriate ways in collaborating and being involved with mining operations on their own lands. Only in such ways, according to Coronado and Fallon (ibid.) is it possible for CSR to make real contribution to the aboriginal communities.

The above study illustrates the point made earlier about the notion of CSR being not easily 16

reducible to dualistic portrayals, such as, on the one hand, “a failing discipline” (Blowfield 2005: 173; Visser 2010:1) ,”a waste of time” (Frynas 2005: 581) and, on the other, “the social license to operate ” (Williams et al. 2007: 133) or the “permission to enter new market” (McElhaney 2009: 35). Such bipolar and dualistic ways of discussing CSR dismisses its opportunities to engage with an increasingly socially and ecologically aware stakeholder base (Fieseler et al. 2010: 599). Neither do they recognize or consider the underlying contradictions that emerge when corporations attempt to discursively frame their social responsibilities (Dhanesh 2014: 159). If competing definitions have diverging biases, people will talk about CSR differently and thus prevent productive engagements (Dahlsrud 2008: 1). Dhanesh (2014: 159) warns against applying a monochromatic, ‘either-­‐or’ approach, reductionist in nature, that will eventually diminish the comprehension of current discourse of CSR in diverse contemporary societies. Consequently some scholars have suggested a different approach falling within the bounds of CDA, introduced below.

2.5.3.1 Dialectical-­‐ Relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis A dialectical approach to CDA in research on social phenomena or issues is a more appropriate mode of understanding social development and differentiation in the dynamic context of global processes (Dhanesh 2014: 158; Fairclough 2009: 162; Heine and Teschke 1996: 411). The principle of dialectic is that of an opposition of dynamic forces which emerge in a pattern of progressive development (Lourenco and Glidewell 1975: 491). As Chiapello and Fairclough (2010: 266) put it, “discourse internalises and is internalised by other elements of social practices without the different elements being reducible to each other”; that is to say, they are different, but not discrete, fully separate elements. For a construct like CSR with “underlying messiness and complexities”, the dialectical approach to CDA is able to create more nuanced understandings of the “contradictions, oppositions and tensions, that characterize the conceptualization, enactment, and communication” of CSR (Dhanesh 2014: 157). A dialectical approach to CDA could open possibilities for greater analytical potential for understanding the co-­‐existence of and interplay among multiple voices in society, thus opening spaces for engaging with diverse perspectives and creating a more holistic understanding of complex social constructs such as CSR (ibid.: 158).

One example of a dialectical approach to analysing CSR discourse is Dhanesh’s (2013) study of the activist-­‐ agent dialectic within Public Relations practitioners in the CSR context of India. Through analysing interviews with senior executives from 16 companies, Dhanesh (2013: 399) established that CSR practitioners see themselves as both organizational ‘activists’ and ‘agents’ (398), 17

simultaneously representing the interests of marginalized communities as well as that of the corporation. As ‘activists’, these CSR executives put effort in recognizing the needs of the weak and vulnerable in society. Dhanesh found that this position of acknowledging pluralistic voices appears to be an integral part of CSR discourse in India, especially in interjecting the voice of the marginalized into the management discourse to influence change (ibid.). At the same time, the executives also saw themselves as organizational ‘agents’, shouldering responsibilities to influence public opinion and expectation in favour of the corporates (ibid.: 400). However, Dhanesh maintains that the ‘agent’ aspect of the activist-­‐agent dialectic is problematic in corporations’ efforts to participate in local community dialogue, as corporate power can often “jeopardize participatory, dialogic and democratic processes” in a society (ibid.: 401). In the complex activist-­‐ agent situation under scrutiny, local community representatives lacked the same capability as corporate executivea to engage in discussions because these were typically framed within corporates’ own points of reference. Thus, the “symbiotic co-­‐existence between local communities and corporates” still leaves great room for improvement (ibid.).

Dhanesh’s dialectical approach in analysing CSR discourse provides an insight into how a given situation is acted upon by another situation, and out of the interaction, a ‘hybridisation of discourse’ (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 14) can arise from the new situation or resolution, providing richer insight into the subject matter. Hence, the dialectical approach will be adopted in this study to address the research gap.

2.6 Research gap The research gap identified is twofold. Firstly, the social aspect of CSR has been overlooked. A substantial number of prior studies mainly investigated the environmental aspect of CSR and major environmental crises, but not the social aspect of CSR, as mentioned in section 1.3. Relatively few have actually focused on the social aspect of CSR, especially in exposing labour injustice in developing countries led by capital power. Thus, the present study seeks to fill this gap in the literature on CSR. Secondly, there is a research gap in terms of methodological approach. Dialectics remains an underutilized methodology in CSR discourse studies, which represents a significant limitation to the study of CSR, particularly in understanding processes of transformation and change. As 18

such, there has been a call (Dhanesh 2014) to use a dialectical approach to analyse the complexities and contradiction that underlie discourses of CSR (159). The present study intends to explore this gap by using Fairclough’s (2009) dialectical-­‐relational approach to critical discourse analysis, which looks into diverse disciplinary resources and sees dialogue between them as a source for theoretical and methodological development of each of them (Fairclough 2005: 53; Fairclough 2009: 163). By bringing together different disciplines and theoretical-­‐analytical frameworks across the CSR realm, it is hoped that richer insights can be gained into the different societal fields examined, including deliberation about facts, practices and values (Chiapello and Fairclough 2010: 256; Fairclough 2009: 163).

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3 METHODOLOGY This chapter begins by presenting the research questions developed in response to the research gap. These are followed by the theoretical approach underpinning the study, and a description of the data selected for analysis. The following part of the chapter then briefly introduces the stages of the analytical approach adopted, outlining the framework for analysis and categories of analysis.

3.1 Research questions The research questions below were developed to address the gap articulated in the previous chapter, that is, to examine the social aspect of CSR reporting in Bangladesh RMG industry with a particular focus on what discursive strategies are used by companies in their CSR reports, and how they position themselves in relation to other stakeholders.

RQ1: What discursive strategies do companies use in CSR reports to repair their corporate image, in the aftermath of the Bangladesh garment factory disasters?

RQ2: How do companies construct subject positions for themselves, the victims, other retailers and other suppliers in these reports?

RQ3: How are companies and the marginalized groups in supply chain constructed differently by social justice campaigners?

3.2 Theoretical approach The present study draws on Fairclough’s (2009) dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA, with a focus on intertextuality and presupposition. Through CDA, the examined discourse can reveal how social identities, objects of knowledge and relationships between people are socially conditioned (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997: 258). In the words of Huckin et al. (2012: 107), CDA is able to “disclose explicated abuses of power promoted by those texts, by analysing linguistic/semiotic details in light of the larger social and political contexts in which those texts circulate”.

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3.2.1 Dialectical-­‐ Relational Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) A dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA is a more gainful procedure in scrutinizing social development and differentiation in the dynamic context of global processes (Dhanesh 2014: 158; Fairclough 2009: 162; Heine and Teschke 1996: 411). Its emphasis is able to reveal the challenge that lies within CSR discourse, as actors compete in a dialectical struggle over positions, ideologies and representations of power relations (Burchell and Cook 2006: 124), which emerges in a pattern of progressive development (Lourenco and Glidewell 1975: 491). Taking this perspective into account, the dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA will be employed in the present study to analyse reports of the recent Bangladesh garment factories disasters. This allows a greater analytical potential to understand the co-­‐existence of multiple voices among the social actors involved, including the companies, victims and suppliers linked to the incidents, as well as activists and social justice campaigners. In this dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA, the present study will draw on two dialectical relations, namely intertextuality (Fairclough 1992: 271) and presupposition (Fairclough 1989: 132) which will be explained in the following sections.

3.2.2 Intertextuality The concept of intertextuality refers to the relation a text has with other texts. Intertextuality points to how texts restructure and transform existing complex conventions such as genres, styles and discourses, to generate new texts and constitute new order of discourse (Fairclough 1992: 270).

Any text is the absorption and transformation of another (Kristeva 1986: 37), which is shaped against the background of social structures, social practices and power relations. Hence, intertextuality not only considers features of texts, but also the social situations in which they were produced, as well as writer’s strategies and social communicative competence in effective and appropriate social interaction (Morreale 2012: 444; Szymańska 2013: 14). Thus, the advantage of an intertextual approach to dialectical-­‐relational discourse analysis is that it is able to assist the study of meaning-­‐making processes that brings ideologies, social knowledge and other social actors’ voices into a text.

3.2.3 Presupposition In discourse and text production, the fabrication of text can be divided into the explicit act of 21

stating, and the implicit act of presupposing (Ducrot 1968, as translated and cited in Macagno and Walton 2014: 173). Presupposition refers to the common ground embedded in a text which is taken for granted by writer and reader (Levinson 2013: 205), including dominant ideologies, shared knowledge and social beliefs. In a dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA, presupposition is an important parameter to measure as intertextuality reveals specific presuppositions of what is already known and unknown (Culler 1976: 1388; Fairclough 1989: 152). On the one hand, certain shared beliefs and background knowledge might be communicated by the writer indirectly without being explicitly asserted and justified (Stalnaker 2002: 701). However, on the other hand, certain ideological statements might be manipulated as true, given or unquestionable (Greco 2003: 217).

This gives rise to the analysis of presuppositions in the present study in order to examine the exercise of power in texts.

3.3 Data As discussed in Section 2.3, some scholars perceive CSR discourse as predominantly shaped by the business community as an agent of empowerment and exploitation, yet some view CSR discourse as an open conversation engaged by broadly participative societal dialogue. Following this line of conjecture, I have collected two sets of data of different types in order to answer the research questions. The primary data set is drawn from 10 retailers’ CSR reports produced after the Bangladesh disasters (Table 3.1), while the second data set is drawn from two social justice campaigner’s reports in reaction to the disasters.

For the primary data set, the companies are linked to the recent factories tragedies including Rana Plaza factory collapse 2013, Standard Group Garment Factory fire 2013, Smart Export Garments Ltd fire 2013, Aswad Composite Mills Factory fire 2013, Tazreen Fashions Building fire 3012, as well as That’s It Sportswear Factory fire 2010. It is worth noting that not all retailers related to the disasters have made their company reports readily available. For example, Mango’s 2013 CSR report is only available in Spanish; El Corte Inglés’s last report appeared in 2012, and Kohl’s stopped reporting its CSR in 2012. In respect of the 10 companies who did produce CSR reports have readily opened themselves to “potentially democratizing discursive forms as stakeholder engagement and dialogue, both shaped by and constitutive of company action and practice” (Livesey 2001: 59).

By contrast, for the secondary data, I have chosen two reports from 1)The Stern Center for 22

Business and Human Rights at New York University (2014) and 2) Berenschot and Centre for Policy Dialogue Bangladesh (2013), Berenschot International being a Dutch-­‐based consultancy. The analysis of secondary data is a key step proposed by Fairclough (2009: 171) to identify possible ways past the social problem, in this case factory safety and workers’ rights issues, in order to study how the dominant discourse is “reacted to, contested, criticized and opposed” (ibid.: 169). These reports, if not equal in volume to the primary data set, are sufficiently representative of their kind to facilitate the dialectical approach selected.

Table 3.1: Data collected in relation to 10 companies linked to Bangladesh garment factory disasters !

Brands'

News'in'Focus' News'Source'

CSR'Reports'Link'

1!

'Primark'

(1)'Rana'Plaza' (1)'The$Guardian$ factory' http://www.theguardian.com/world/ collapse'2013;'' 2014/apr/16/rana:plaza:factory:

Our$Ethics:$Rana$Plaza$

(2)'Aswad' Composite' Mills'Factory' fire'2013'

$

http://www.primark.com/en/our: ethics/news/rana:plaza!

collapse:bangladesh:change:fashion: shopping:habits!

!

2!

!

'

Benetton' Rana'Plaza' factory' collapse'2013'

'

'

(2)'Daily$Mail$ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art icle:2450723/Bangladesh:clothes: factory:kills:10.html'

The$Guardian$ http://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2014/apr/16/rana:plaza:factory: collapse:bangladesh:change:fashion: shopping:habits!

$

Our$Engagement$for$ Bangladesh:$Benetton$Group$and$ BRAC$Partner$for$the$victims$of$ Rana$Plaza$and$their$families! http://www.benettongroup.com/sus tainability/benetton:for: bangladesh/02_bangladesh_brac_f.h tml!

Position'statement'–'Benetton' Group'in'Bangladesh:'the'facts''

http://www.benettongroup.com/site s/all/temp/doc/position_statement_ en.pdf!

3!

!

4!

'

5!

'JCPenny'

'

Zara'

'

H&M'

(1)'Rana'Plaza' factory' collapse'2013'' '

(1)'Time$

(2)'That’s'It' Sportswear' factory'fire' 2010'

(2)'Clean$Clothes$Campaign$

(1)'Standard' Group' Garment' Factory'fire' 2013''

(1)'Business$Insider$ http://www.businessinsider.com/wo rkers:burn:down:bangladesh: garment:factory:that:supplied:gap: wal:mart:zara:2013:12!!

http://www.inditex.com/documents/ 10279/18789/Inditex_Group_Annual _Report_2013.pdf/88b623b8:b6b0: 4d38:b45e:45822932ff72$

(2)'Smart' Export' Garments'Ltd' fire'2013'

(2)'ABC$News$

!

Aswad' Composite' Mills'Factory' fire'2013'

Daily$Mail$

http://business.time.com/2013/05/0 2/bangladesh:factory:collapse:is: there:blood:on:your:shirt/!

JCPenny$2013$Sustainability$ Report$ http://jcpenney.mobular.net/jcpenn ey/212/1/1/document_0/JCPenney_ SustainabilityReport.pdf'

$

http://www.cleanclothes.org/news/2 011/12/15/thats:it:sportswear:fire: one:year:on:workers:still:dying:in: unsafe:buildings'

Intidex$Annual$Report$2013$

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/facto ry:fire:kills:garment: workers/story?id=18327767!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art icle:2450723/Bangladesh:clothes: factory:kills:10.html!

H&M$Conscious$Actions:$ Sustainability$Report$2013$ http://sustainability.hm.com/content /dam/hm/about/documents/en/CSR/ reports/Conscious%20Actions%20Sus tainability%20Report%202013_en.pd f!

23

3.4 Analytical framework 3.4.1 Overall analytical framework: Dialectical-­‐Relational Approach to CDA in studying dialogue between texts Table 3.2 below illustrates Fairclough’s framework for a dialectical–relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis in studying dialogue between texts. These include drawing upon relevant theories in a transdisciplinary to study the social wrong under examination, and an analysis of conjunctures in relation to the social wrong. Table 3.3 demonstrates my adaptation of Fairclough’s framework to be used in this dissertation to study the dialogue between the primary and 24

secondary data sets. Some steps set out by Fairclough have already been covered in the literature review and methodology so far. For example at Stage 1, “focusing upon a social wrong”, in relation to which labour injustice in Bangladesh’s Ready-­‐Made Garment sector was described in Section 2.4, and at Stage 2, “selecting texts” in relation to the data introduced above in Section 3.3.

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3.4.2 Textual Features Analysis: Description, Interpretation and Explanation levels in studying individual texts After the relevant theories and discursive events are looked at in Stage 2 and 3, the textual features of both sets of the reports will be analysed in Stage 4 and 5. Fairclough (1989: 21) describes a three-­‐ step approach in analysing texts: firstly, the linguistic description of the formal properties of text; secondly, the interpretation of the relationship between texts and interaction; and thirdly, the explanation of the relationship between discourse and social and cultural reality. As Rahimi and Riasati (2011: 109) describe, Fairclough’s three-­‐dimensional framework enables analyst to study the “whatness” of text description, and beyond that, the “how” and “whyness” through text interpretation and explanation. This tri-­‐focal is able to assist the process of ‘analysing the relationship between texts, processes, and their social conditions, both the immediate conditions of the situational context and the more remote conditions of institutional and social structures’ (Fairclough 1989: 21).

3.4.3 Categories of linguistic analysis: Transitivity, mood, and modality In the description of the texts, linguistic features in terms of transitivity, mood types and modality structures will be looked at. The transitivity systems of a clause is concerned with the phenomenon in how the ideational function of that particular clause is structured. It answers the question of “What is going on?” . The system of transitivity consists of different process types, participants and circumstances. In English, six process types are recognized: material process, behaviour process, mental process, verbal process, relational process, and existential process. Mood is the form a verb takes to show how it is to be regards, whether as a fact, a command, a wish, or an uncertainty. It is concerned with the intention in writings or utterances, which is distinguished between declarative, interrogative and imperative mood. Declarative sentence states a fact or an argument, interrogative sentence asks a question, whereas imperative mood expresses a command or a request. Modality refers to the speakers’ or writers’ attitude towards the state of the world. It conveys certainties, possibilities or probabilities, revealing how speakers or writers try to get things done or control the course of events through degrees of instructions or obligation.

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3.4.4 Benoit’s (1997) Image-­‐restoration strategies Benoit’s (1997: 179) image-­‐restoration strategies will be looked at in analysing what discursive strategies the companies have used in repairing their corporate image in the aftermath of the Bangladesh garment factory disasters.

Table 3.4 Image-­‐restoration strategies (Benoit 1997: 179)

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4 ANALYSIS 4.1 Stage 1: Define research questions which relate to the ‘social wrong’ As Fairclough (2009: 167) illustrates, ‘social wrongs’ are aspects of social systems which are detrimental to human well-­‐being. In this dissertation, the ‘social wrong’ points to labour injustice in Bangladesh’s Ready-­‐Made Garment industry, as mentioned in Section 2.4.

The research questions presented in the methodology chapter were defined to relate to this social wrong. A concern as to what discursive strategies used by companies in their CSR reports, and the way they position themselves in relation to other stakeholders (victims, other retailers, other suppliers) is at the heart of this study. It is also useful to consider how these constructions are contested by campaigners for social justice, so a third research question was developed accordingly.

4.2 Stage 2: Drawing upon relevant theories in a transdisciplinary way In any exercise in discourse analysis, it is of the utmost importance to take into account the context of the texts’ production. A fully critical account of discourse would require drawing upon neighbouring bodies of theory, in other words, in a “transdisciplinary way” in order to study the reality which gives rise to the production of texts (Wodak 2001: 3).

In this section, I will further explore the dialectical examination of the ideological divide surrounding the labour dimension of CSR as discussed in Chapter 2.4, in order to study the social reality that gives rise to the texts. Relevant theories are drawn upon from two perspectives, that is: from an ethical point of view, multinational corporations are seen as predators in fuelling labour injustice in developing countries; but from an economic growth point of view, multinational corporations are seen as one of the most important allies in helping developing countries advance economically and socially.

4.2.1 Multinational corporations as allies in developing countries’ socio-­‐ economic development: the case of Bangladesh

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The Ready-­‐ Made Garments (RMG) sector has been the backbone of Bangladesh’s socio-­‐economic development since the 1980s (Islam 2014: 1). It is a labour-­‐intensive industry, requiring relatively little fixed capital but is able to create large employment opportunities and foreign exchange earnings (Ahmed et.al 2013: 938). RMG industry alone fetches 79% of the total export earnings of Bangladesh in 2013 (BGMEA 2014: para. 2), consistently supplying apparels to some of the world's largest retailers, namely Primark, Mango, H&M, Next, and many more. This makes Bangladesh currently the second largest exporter of RGM products in the world. Bangladesh is able to maintain its competitive edge and offer immense opportunities for foreign investors, due to their special advantages on high volume, cheap labour, low prices and good quality (Islam 2014: 1). The Bangladeshi government has hence established tax holidays and development of export enclaves, enabling businessmen to build or rent bonded warehouses in Dhaka and Chittagong cities.

However, all eyes are also on multinational corporates as important forces in addressing critical issues where local government lack the ability to do so. For example, Tesco’s clothing brand F&F has donated more than 200,000 school uniforms to children in Kenya, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh where their factories are based in (Tesco 2014: 32). Disney has also helped more than 10,000 children by supporting UNICEF’s P.L.A.Y., bringing portable playground units to children living in disaster-­‐recovery conditions (Disney 2012: 23). The world’s largest multi-­‐product retailer, Walmart, has also set up 100 learning centres for women to gain workplace skills and receive health and literacy training, “impacting more than 14,000 people” (Walmart 2012: 38). Since in developing countries, economic development and social upliftment are seldom separable, this no doubt represent the greatest CSR opportunities in developing countries (DaSilva 2013: para.5).

4.2.2 Multinational corporations as predators in fuelling labour injustice in developing countries However, the reliance on big corporates for their CSR initiatives may result in corporations obtaining more powerful positions within society. In accepting responsibilities, corporations would incur costs and in return would claim rights in dominating both the economic and political realms (Belal and Cooper 2011: 2; Llewellyn 2007: 146). Besides, the competition among countries to dominate the RMG industry has caused the “Survival of the cheapest” to become the leading maxim (Clean Clothes Campaign 2008: 13). Large corporations’ enormous purchasing power affords them to drive manufacturing prices down, forcing competitors to pursue similar low-­‐cost sourcing 29

strategies, including minimizing labour costs (Ton 2012: para. 5).

Apart from that, the RMG industry in Bangladesh has been embattled seeking a wage increase from the current Tk3,000 (US$39) per month to Tk8,114 (US$100) living wage per month (Bangladesh Textile Today 2013: para. 10), in which ‘living wage’, according to Labour Behind the Label (2014: 4), enables a worker to afford food, rent, healthcare, education, clothing, transportation, and saving.

However, corporates including fashion retail giant H&M maintain that any wage demand over Tk5,000 (US$65) is too costly for the industry (Donaldson 2014: para. 1; Paul and Quadir 2013: para.

8). The mere threat of multinational corporations’ relocation to the next country with the lowest wages is enough for local governments to align their labour and trade policies to meet demands of global buyers, continue to suppress union activities and legal minimum wages that stand for dignity the 4.4 million labour workers equally deserve.

Manufacturers’ refusal to undertake costly renovations and review labour wages has led them to subcontract production to smaller, non-­‐compliant factories. These changes are sometimes carried out without the knowledge of foreign buyers, and resulting poor labour safety compliances have often been the reason for fatal accidents like the Rana Plaza disaster (Sneed 2014: para. 5).

However, many global clothing brands initially denied they had authorized production at such factories even when labels were found in the rubble after accidents (O’Connor 2014: para.8). In spite of their reluctance to compensate or adhere to tighter regulatory compliance, such retail giants are and always will be held accountable for the vicious circle of the global ‘race to the bottom’ in wages, leading the public to question if their CSR charity initiatives are merely to cover up the negative impact by saturating the media with positive images.

The above two perspectives on multinational corporations, as allies on the one hand and as predators on the other, help to provide a broad sense of the social reality in which the discourse in focus is located (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 61). In Section 4.3 below, a more specific focus will be taken on the recent factory disasters in Bangladesh.

4.3 Stage 3: Analysis of conjunctures in relation to the ‘social wrong’: Deadly factory disasters in Bangladesh Critical discourse analysis highlights the importance of ‘moments’; in other words the 30

dialectical relations between semiosis and other social elements in order to understand how specific occasions have an influence on the discourse (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 61). In Stage 3, I have chosen the recent industrial accidents in Bangladesh as the “point of entry” (Fairclough 2009: 169), to study how retailers who are held responsible reacted to it.

On the 24 April 2013, Bangladesh experienced yet another horrific industrial disaster. The collapse of Rana Plaza claimed 1,133 lives (Islam 2014: 1-­‐2), and between 2000 and 2013 more than 1,500 people died in garment industrial disasters caused by fire, building collapses or stampedes. Victims from the Rana Plaza collapse, Tazreen Fashion fire, Aswad garment factory fire, That’s It Factory fire, Standard Group Garment Factory fire or Smart Export Garments Ltd fire are yet to receive their deserved full compensation (Lehmann 2014: para. 7). This shows a dubious system of accountability at local and global scale: the deliberate indifference on the part of corporates, wilful ignorance of building codes by the factory owners, and negligence by local government officials and inspectors. However, although the front-­‐line responsibility lies with the local government, most of the public see the retailers who were “haggling on every cent” (Kuenssberg 2014: para. 6), squeezing profit-­‐killing concessions from factories, as the main culprits behind the disasters (Manik and Yardley 2013: para. 13; Hall 2013: para. 2). As a check against the critical power imbalance between groups in society, Scherer et al. (2006, p. 520) suggest the need or “the democratization of corporate activities, through continuous discourse participation and enlarged mechanisms of transparency, monitoring, and reporting”.

4.4 Stage 4: Description and Interpretation of primary data set: 10 companies’ CSR reports in the aftermath of Bangladesh factories disasters Two parts of Fairclough’s three-­‐dimensional framework (1989:26) for describing, interpreting and explaining texts are used at this stage to analyse the primary data set of 10 companies’ CSR reports.

Firstly will be the “Description of texts”, looking at companies’ image-­‐repair discursive strategies, as well as analysing linguistic features such as transitivity, mood types or modality structures, depending on which feature is most pronounced in the subject positioning of different social actors.

Secondly will be the “Interpretation of the relationship between texts and interaction”, with an intertextuality and/or presupposition focus. The third dimension, the “Explanation of the

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relationship between interaction and social context” (ibid.: 109) will be discussed in Chapter 5.

4.4.1 Companies’ image-­‐repair discursive strategies Description of Discourse Excerpts 1 -­‐ 8

In the CSR reports, several image-­‐restoration strategies illustrated by Benoit (1997: 179) can be observed, particularly relating to denial, transcendence, problems minimization and image bolstering. Firstly, in terms of denial, some companies have denied accusations that could be possibly charged to them due to their strong presence in Bangladesh; for example in claiming that they “had no business relationship with” (Excerpt 1) or “did not have any production in” (Excerpt 2) the collapsed Rana Plaza. Besides, some companies attempt to reduce offensiveness through transcendence, in other words, by putting the accusations in a more favourable context. For example, when the public and media has criticised some companies for not joining the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (Berfield 2013: para.1; Gunther 2013: para.2), the explanation is directed to make readers believe that “independent action is the most effective way” to address the related issues (Excerpt 3). Other than that, some companies also try to downplay the extent of damage by minimizing the negative effects, for example, to re-­‐frame problems found during 32

social compliance audits as “an opportunity to trigger improvements” (Excerpt 4). However, the most commonly found image-­‐repair strategy across the reports is image-­‐bolstering, used by companies to strengthen readers’ positive feeling towards them. For example, companies declare that values such as “transparency” (Excerpt 5) or “adherence to the highest standards of ethics” (Excerpt 6) play an integral part in their business, besides illustrating and reminding readers of companies’ previous good deeds (Excerpts 7 and 8). All in all, these strategies are an attempt to mitigate the damage to reputation caused by their link to the fatal Rana Plaza collapse.

Interpretation of Discourse Although some companies were not directly involved in the Rana Plaza collapse, they did not touch on other issues and seek to demonstrate that they were not responsible for them. This explains most companies’ lack of explanation on core issues, such as turning a blind eye on non-­‐compliant indirect sourcing to increase margins as well as boost production capacity while keeping costs low (The Stern Center 2014: 9). Instead, the companies are keen on demonstrating how pivotal they are in performing other good deeds. This shows that the companies who are the “symbolic elites” (van Dijk 1989: 22) or the dominant group in control of the discourse (in this case, the production of the CSR reports) have relative freedom in deciding what topics to provide accounts of, and what would be acceptable to bolster their image. In other words, they are the “manufacturers” of beliefs, norms and ideologies (ibid.). Companies’ subject position for themselves Description of Discourse Excerpts 5 -­‐ 11

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One particular focus in CDA is to highlight how texts can obscure or hide the events being described, and more specifically, how social agents associated with the process or event can be veiled (O’Halloran 2005: 1946). In facing such big crises as the Rana Plaza collapse, the retailers who are also “powerful actors” (Belal and Cooper 2011: 659) often do not admit issues that threaten their image. In the reports examined, one of the main textual characteristics identified is that the description of the disasters are construed without responsible social agents. In Excerpt 9 and 10, the agents of the material processes “a tragic fire broke out” and “major industrial accidents occurred” are absent. In Excerpt 11, “the tragedy” and “dead and injured” are the agents of the passive sentence, which construe the disaster as happenings without social agents. In addition, the use of nominalization in choosing noun phrases over adjectives (“transparency” in Excerpt 5) or noun phrases over verbs (“Adherence to the highest standards of ethics is an integral part of…” in Excerpt 6) make the sentences into agentless statements that convey less information and avoid personalisation of addressees. By contrast, when it comes to bolstering companies’ image, the social agents in the sentences found in the reports are often fully present. The use of first person pronoun ‘we’ is particularly frequent (such as “we introduced” and “we conduct” in Excerpts 7 and 8) which appears to be an attempt to delineate the level of commitment in society at large and conjure up a good corporate image. Further, the ‘material process’ type of transitivity, referring to processes concerning the doing, happening, creating and changing (Barker and Galasiriski 2001: 70) is most commonly found in how companies create subject positions for themselves, such as “we introduced” and “we conduct” in Excerpts 7 and 8. Situating themselves clearly as the ‘actor’ and their good deeds as the ‘goals’, conveys a stronger sense of action, which could then project an image to the readers that companies are and have been heavily engaged in ensuring workplace safety.

Interpretation of Discourse Excerpts 12 -­‐ 13

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Text semiotically construe identities and simultaneously seek to make these construals persuasive (Fairclough 2009: 178). It is salient in the reports that companies wish to lend authority to their own claim to deflect criticism and gain public favour. By claiming that they are “advocates”, “among the earliest signatories of the [Accord]” (Excerpt 12) or “selected … [for the]… Steering Committee” (Excerpt 13), companies attempt to foreground or give textual prominence to their swiftness in signing the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Accord, which is a legally-­‐binding five-­‐ year agreement (Long and O’Neil 2014: para. 2). Breaking from previous voluntary, business-­‐led CSR, companies are now invoking the Accord’s credibility to bestow on them an authoritative voice, lending credence to themselves. The decision to introduce the Accord as an element of external interference in the CSR discourse as well as the governance of CSR would have seemed highly unlikely in previous CSR discourse (Broomhill 2007: 5). The timing and intensity of the Rana Plaza collapse has apparently created a critical moment for the re-­‐articulation of the discourse surrounding CSR.

4.4.2 Companies’ subject position for victims Description of Discourse Excerpts 11, 14-­‐16

The analysis of transitivity choices focuses on how a writer represents who acts (agent) and who is acted upon (affected participants) in the text, which 35

is

represented

by

the

Process,

Participants and attendant Circumstances. It is observed that in most cases, the victims are not represented as agent who act, or as participants who are acted upon. For example, in Excerpt 11, the victims referred as “a thousand dead, and thousands more injured” is only a Circumstance of how the year 2013 (participant) is marked by the tragedy (agent). This deprives the victims of their “roles as human participants” (Mills 1995: 143). Although some examples illustrate the representation of victims as agent or participant (for example, “workers and families” as agent in Excerpt 14 and “list of employees” as participant in Excerpt 15), most of these process types are Relational Processes which indicates a state of being rather than an action of doing. Compared to Material Processes, Relational Processes convey a weaker sense of action, which suggests a lower commitment from companies to the affected victims of Rana Plaza. Subsequently, in reference to Excerpt 16, the insufficient specification of agency on who should be held responsible in providing the affected workers’ list to the company before compensation could start, as well as who should be responsible in paying compensation to the victims, mystifies the social agents against the backdrop of a highly complex nature of social interaction and institution.

Interpretation of Discourse In terms of intertextuality, it is salient that most companies who are blamed for their rush to maximize profits at the expense of labour justice, have borrowed a newspaper’s expository tone by adopting the use of neutral connotations. Words with strong connotations such as “victim” and “casualties” are used only by companies who have touched upon issues of compensation, and are generally substituted with words with neutral connotations such as “people” (Excerpt 13), “workers” (Excerpt 14), or are altogether reduced to figures such as “a thousand dead, and thousands more injured” (Excerpt 11). The expository tone implied indicates no value judgement on the part of the companies, in an attempt to cushion the negative impact. The responsible social agents are also often omitted, without hinting to the readers ‘who did what to whom’. It is clear that the ‘neutrality’ represented through the reports is itself an ideological construct. Voices of the public, the opponents as well as the often marginalized victims are silenced out and invisible in the reports. Companies do not want to depict an unnecessarily negative image that intensifies the public’s negative judgement on the crises.

In fact, not all fatal factory disasters and their victims have received equal attention as Rana Plaza does in the CSR reports as well as in the media. Among these are the Tazreen Fashion factory fire, 36

the Standard Group factory fire, Smart Export Garments factory fire, and there are many more.

Compared to the Rana Plaza collapse which received the most intensive press coverage and generated the most collective mourning, the rest of the accidents are relatively under-­‐represented in the media. This is intertextually echoed in the CSR reports, where the ‘smaller-­‐scale’ incidents are virtually unnoticed, let alone responsibility claimed for them by the companies. As Christie (1986:18) points out, media attention is often allocated to the ‘ideal victims’ in deciding which stories deserve priority. This hierarchy of victimization (Greer 2003:22) reflected in the CSR reports, will impact upon readers’ experiences in apprehending the ins and outs of the incidents and their circumstances.

Further, taking Excerpt 15 for example, a certain disparity is apparent between the notion of business (“business relationship”) and companies’ corporate social responsibility or CSR (“duty to participate”); in other words, a stalemate between the economic model and the ethical model of CSR (Driver 2006: 338). By expressing that the “company felt it was its duty to participate in the initiatives”, companies presupposed that helping the victims and acting on the basis of non-­‐ economic interest is principally non-­‐compulsory but more a “duty”, conveying a message that companies’ efforts in “mitigat[ing] the effects of the collapse of the building” should therefore be recognized. Companies seem to regard the economic and ethical models of CSR as models of opposition, which concept has long been the subject of debate in the press and public.

4.4.3 Companies’ subject position for other retailers Description of Discourse Excerpts 16-­‐18

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In the reports examined, one of the main textual characteristics found in companies’ subject position for other retailers is the use of nominalization, which is a shift from verbs to nouns in the representation of actions and processes. Some examples include “to take action” (Excerpt 16) instead of “to act”, or the noun ‘change’ (Excerpt 17) instead of the verb ‘change’ in addressing other retailers collectively to bring about a message of change, as well as “to make this contribution” (Excerpt 18) instead of “to contribute” in hinting other retailers should play a part in the compensation of victims. By concealing actions in nouns, nominalization transforms processes and actions situated in the “here and now” into a type of pseudo-­‐entity applicable “wherever, whenever and involving whoever” (Iedema 2003: 73). This requires readers to translate the sentences into more comprehensible elements, giving the text a distanced meaning (ibid. 79) which allows companies to slightly detach themselves from the situation and make their prose seem more obscure. In contrast with the higher usage of concrete verbs and nouns when communicating the company-­‐self, when subject-­‐positioning the other retailers companies are inclined to employ nominalization in forms of abstract verbs and adjectives. This suggests that companies may be trying to democratically build solidarity and an equal relationship with other retailers, using discourse for “potentially constructive effects” on organizational identities and social relations (Fairclough 1993: 148).

Interpretation of Discourse Excerpts 17, 19, 20

Ideological struggle and power relations are often employed or revealed through the intertextuality of texts (Momani et al. 2010: para. 9). One of the features of intertextuality is the borrowing 38

of other social actor’s voices. As Gadavanij (2002:501) suggests, using another person’s voice to make a point can achieve two goals at the same time: one can mock or even attack the opponent without bearing much responsibility for the act. Across the reports, the we-­‐identification in expressions such as “we believe that all apparel brands […] have a role to play” (Excerpt 17), or “we pledged that”, “we called on” (Excerpt 19) employs an inclusive ‘we’, borrowing a voice from the larger public, including the media and activists, to evoke a sense of commonality. These statements frontloaded with we-­‐identification can be seen as placing greater emphasis on ‘company self’, where Self embodies the norm and whose identity is valued, than on ‘other retailers’, where Others are defined by their faults, “susceptible to discrimination” (Staszak 2008: 1).

On the one hand, companies are trying to democratically build solidarity with other retailers for constructive effects; on the other, companies are attempting to affiliate with the public at large, seemingly sharing public fury over the tragedies and making it legitimate to censure other companies who “continue to deliberate on long-­‐term compensation” or would possibly “fail to make this contribution” (Excerpt 20). This ‘allies or rivals’ notion altogether reveals how discourse contributes to and is affected by power struggle, social change as well as social construction (Fairclough 1989: 163).

4.4.4 Companies’ subject position for suppliers Description of Discourse Excerpts 21-­‐24

In the context of the present study, modality is analysed in relation to companies’ assessment of necessity and obligation inherent in rights and duties. In companies’ construction of subject 39

positions for local suppliers, relational modality expressed by the modal auxiliary ‘must’ is most commonly found, which indicates the highest sense of obligation. Examples refer to Codes of Conduct which suppliers ‘must’ follow (Excerpt 21), or factories which ‘must’ be ethically audited before being signed off by companies (Excerpt 22).No weak or tentatively-­‐worded modality such as ‘probably’ or ‘most likely’ is found. In terms of mood, although most sentences are declarative statements, they are mostly in prohibitive form (eg. Excerpts 23 and 24) which send out direct commands to local suppliers. The prevalence of “must” as well as the use of declarative sentences in prohibitive form symbolizes the highest degree of pressure on local suppliers, which reflects companies’ authority over the local suppliers, explicitly marking the power inequality between both parties. This mirrors the stalemate between the Western retailers and global suppliers, which tension continues to grow in the aftermath of the factory disasters.

Interpretation of Discourse Excerpts 25 and 26

In terms of intertextuality, Excerpt 25 shows a direct discourse, which consists of a reporting clause (company mentioning and stating the Vendor Compliance Agreement) followed by a representation of discourse (direct quotation from the Agreement). Quoting the Agreement or Code of Conduct is a matter of lending authority and credentials to the company’s voice. In constructing subject positions for the suppliers, the direct representation of extracts from the company’s Code of Conduct has the effect of adding power to the assertion put forward by the companies. Companies want to make sure that their message is understood “against the background of other concrete utterances of the same theme” (Bakhtin 1981: 281). This explicit boundary between the ‘voice’ of the Code of Conduct with a coercive, legalistic character, and the voice of the company itself is a face-­‐saving practice (Momani et al.: para. 5), by using a mediator or third party to communicate a message, asserting authority and command over the local suppliers.

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However, to put forward a quote from a company’s Code of Conduct presupposes that readers or particularly local suppliers can fully comprehend the often complex and legalistic discourse of the Codes. It has been argued that the language of Codes of Conduct should be simplified (Deloitte 2005: 2) as the intricate expressions in such documents are hindering effective communication between retailers and local suppliers, if not among the retailers or legal professionals themselves.

As shown in Excerpt 26, Codes of Conduct which are directed at local suppliers often have a coercive, legalistic character. An important social consideration in scrutinizing the issue of social power inequality is that in most situations the specialists or experts, in this case the retailers, are the holders of power (Bloor and Bloor 2007: 62). The retailers hold the key to the expert discourse, and the suppliers are more or less passive targets of the discourse being told what to do or what to believe (van Dijk 2001: 356). The polarization between Self and Others is particularly evident, as the Codes are not merely technical tools to moderate labour regimes, but also generate social regimes of power and inequality.

It has been observed that the Western retailers not only pass most of the responsibilities to the local suppliers on buildings and worker safety, but also transform local procedures in line with their Western practices, seeing that as the “antidote” (De Neve 2009: 63). The rationale for making sure that suppliers are compliant with the Codes of Conduct was based on a discourse that cast the suppliers as “unsafe and risk-­‐bearing subjects” (Dunn 2005: 180). This effectively casts the Western retailers as “knowledgeable, caring and disciplined”, and their non-­‐western suppliers as “backward, uncaring and lacking self-­‐control” (De Neve 2009: 64). The socio-­‐economic implications of the Codes ultimately challenge the status of local suppliers and putting them at a disadvantage.

4.5 Stage 5: Description and Interpretation of secondary data: reports from social justice campaigners as possible resource for change Stage 5 moves on to the analysis of two reports from social justice campaigners, in order to study how CSR reports as a dominant discourse is “reacted to, contested, criticized and opposed”, and to explore possible ways to overcome the social wrong in focus (Fairclough 2009: 239). However, as Dhanesh (2014: 159) reminds us, a dualistic, ‘either-­‐or’ portrayal of CSR is reductionist in nature, as it will eventually dismiss the comprehensibility of CSR in diverse contemporary societies. Hence, I have filtered out reports from social justice campaigners that have altogether discredited the companies, such as those who condemn companies for “clearly fail[ing] to deliver real 41

changes in the lives of millions of garment workers” (War on Want 2014: 3), or have represented the “gravest failure of the textiles and garment supply chain” (OECD 2014: 1). Such bipolar depiction which expects equally extreme responses may lead readers to relate to one side and frown upon the other, thereby causing conflicts to escalate and diminishing the opportunity to engage sincerely with the stakeholders.

Instead, I have chosen two reports that have employed a problem-­‐solving approach to the matter, authored by The Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University (2014) and Berenschot and Centre for Policy Dialogue Bangladesh (2013) respectively. The former report is a year-­‐long study of the garment supply chain in Bangladesh, looking into its business operation, business strategies, and effects on working conditions. The latter reports on a suggested calculation of minimum wage to be adopted by the garment industry. Both reports include direct participation and feedback from stakeholders such as factory workers, workers representatives, factory owners, trade unionists and so on.

4.5.1 Social justice campaigners’ subject positions for companies and marginalized groups Description of Discourse Excerpts 27-­‐32

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Although reports by both the companies as well as social justice campaigners have construed the factory safety and workers’ rights issue as a need to be addressed urgently, they are clearly presented in different ways. In the campaigners’ reports but not the CSR reports, the call for a reform in the garment sector does include responsible social agents: the global brands are first and foremostly addressed in most cases (Excerpts 27-­‐29), but also along with other social actors such as local factory owners, local government agencies, consumers, civil societies, unions; and on a wider horizon, international donor communities, foreign governments, the World Bank, and so on (Excerpts 30-­‐32). This construes the issue as a responsibility of multiple social actors across the supply chain, making it visible that the reform in the garment sector needs to be acknowledged and addressed jointly and cooperatively.

In terms of modality, the semi-­‐modals ‘need to’ and ‘have to’ (Excerpts 27-­‐29) are commonly used in addressing the companies. For example, retailers are told that they “need to recalibrate their business relationships” (Excerpt 28) or “have to review their costing and lead-­‐time calculations” (Excerpt 29).This contrasts with the modal verb ‘must’ heavily used in companies’ CSR reports, which conveys personal authority over the local suppliers. The use of ‘need to’ or ‘have to’ by the campaigners “conveys an obligation upon some external compulsion” (Fairclough 1989: 184). This might imply that the obligation as conveyed by the campaigners is not just based upon their say-­‐so, but is also inherent in the nature of corporates’ social responsibilities or even ethics, in that it is the right course of action to be taken and needs to underpin how management make decisions.

Excerpts 33-­‐37

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In addition, the discourse of the social justice campaigners’ reports has provided “alternative speaking positions” (Powers 2001: 62), in reproducing voices of the people whom are addressed by the discourse, as well as fostering or challenging existing relations through the discourse. The texts have construed and helped foster relationships between the companies and local suppliers, employing words with positive and confidence-­‐building connotation, such as “trust-­‐based”, (Excerpt 33), “rewarding high-­‐performing suppliers”, “longer-­‐term contracts”, “higher order volumes”, “favorable pricing (Excerpt 34); which contrast with the stalemate relationship between the foreign companies and local suppliers that tends to exist in companies’ CSR reports. The diversity of perspectives and the inclusion of other voices is also addressed, in which the voice of the most marginalized in the supply chain is privileged in the discourse, such as voice of the RMG workers brought up during focus group discussions (Excerpt 35), or voice of workers representatives brought up during Public Dialogue meetings (Excerpt 36). Interestingly, a third-­‐ person narrative with the pronoun ‘he’ is also adopted in presenting the voice of a factory owner (Excerpt 37), allowing readers to engage with and gain insight into the daily events and conflicts that persist in the supply chain line.

Interpretation of Discourse The interjection of the multiple voices of stakeholders into the social justice campaigners’ reports have shown that the reports have provided a platform for a broadly participative societal dialogue.

It demonstrates that discourse could be a shared way of apprehending the world, socially constructed by multiple social actors (Dahlsrud 2008: 6; Dryzek 2005: 9). Ironically, although the social justice campaigners’ reports do not share the same genre as the CSR reports, the campaigners’ reports exemplify a more desirable “relational stakeholder approach to CSR” (Reynolds and Yuthas 2008: 47), that is, managing a duty of care towards an extended web of stakeholders’ interests, including “silent stakeholders” (Cowton 2008: 25; Jamali 2008: 217) such as the workers and local communities. The CSR reports have expression of promotion and self-­‐ justification; whilst the social justice campaigners’ do not. In the CSR reports, the workers had the most “passive access” to the discourse, spoken about by the companies as a subject or topic of discourse; whereas in the campaigners’ reports, the workers have “active access” to discourse, able to speak for themselves (van Dijk 1996: 86).

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4.6 Stage 6: Answers to research questions By way of summarising the chapter, this section brings together the findings from the analysis of CSR reports and social justice campaigners’ reports, in terms of responses to the research questions set out in Section 3.1.

4.6.1 Research Question 1 RQ 1 concerned the discursive strategies companies used in their CSR reports to repair their corporate image in the aftermath of the garment factory disasters. In the CSR reports, several image restoration strategies were observed, particularly those of denial, transcendence, problem minimization and image bolstering. These strategies are an attempt to mitigate damage, cushion negative impacts, or to direct readers’ attention towards other positive aspects. Companies were keen on demonstrating how pivotal they were in performing good deeds, but avoided explanations in response to accusations which touched upon core problems. This demonstrates that companies who are the “symbolic elites” have relative power in controlling the discourse and hence influence beliefs, norms and ideologies.

4.6.2 Research Question 2 RQ 2 sought to find out how corporations constructed subject positions for themselves, the victims, other retailers and other suppliers in relation to the disasters. Firstly, in companies’ construction of subject positions for themselves, other than using the abovementioned image-­‐repair strategies, companies also lent credence to themselves by using the legally-­‐binding Accord, bestowing on themselves an authoritative voice to deflect criticism and gain public favour.

Secondly, in constructing subject positions for the victims, the CSR reports depict victims as voiceless and have no value judgement passed from the companies. The neutral, expository tone used by the companies indicates a refusal to intensify negative judgments. The ‘smaller-­‐scale’ incidents as compared to the widely covered Rana Plaza collapse have also gone virtually unnoticed in the reports, intertextually echoing with the press and media’s selection of ‘ideal victims’ and decisions about which stories deserve priority. Companies’ reactions in presupposing that helping the victims and acting on the basis of non-­‐

economic interest is principally non-­‐compulsory

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but a “duty”, suggests that companies still regard the notion of business and the notion of CSR as models in opposition.

Thirdly, in constructing subject positions for the other retailers involved, the CSR reports depict other retailers both as allies and rivals. On the one hand companies are trying to build a solidarity with other retailers for constructive effects; on the other hand companies attempt to borrow a voice from the public at large to legitimately censure other companies who are equally held accountable for the cause of the disasters.

Fourthly, in constructing subject positions for the local suppliers, the companies have shown high authority over the local suppliers, similarly using the Codes of Conduct to add credentials to their voice in pressuring the suppliers, explicitly marking the power inequality between both parties. As the retailers hold the key to the expert discourse of the Codes, the local suppliers are seen as passive targets of the discourse and this magnifies the polarization between companies and the suppliers, ultimately challenging the status of local suppliers.

4.6.3 Research Question 3 RQ3 sought to discover how companies and marginalized groups in the garment sector supply chain were constructed differently in the social justice campaigners’ reports. Although the campaigners’ reports do not share the same genre as the CSR reports, they represent multiple voices of the stakeholders, and allow silent stakeholders to have active access to the discourse and speak for themselves. Compared to the CSR reports, the social justice campaigners’ reports seem to exemplify a more desirable relational stakeholder approach to CSR.

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5 Discussion The discussion will centre around a relational stakeholder approach to CSR and include a consideration of the implications of drawing upon Habermas’ theory of communicative action to introduce “moral discourse” in CSR reporting.

Findings emerging from the description and interpretation of texts in the previous chapter revealed that that the social justice campaigners’ reports exemplified a more desirable “relational stakeholder approach to CSR” (Reynolds and Yuthas 2008: 47) than did the ironically titled and justified CSR reports of the companies. A relational stakeholder approach to CSR considers interaction among corporations and constituents as relational in nature, differs from traditional stakeholder theory that sees stakeholders as external parties having a social contract with corporations (ibid.). Hence, it is useful to discuss the relational approach to CSR that the social justice campaigners’ reports take and which the companies’ CSR reports are lacking. This discussion will be supported by Reynolds and Yuthas’s (2008:48) suggestion to draw upon Habermas’s theory of communicative action to introduce “moral discourse” in CSR reporting, cited earlier in the Literature Review. Habermas’s proposition includes several dimensions which are ideal for morally-­‐ justifiable and democratic outcomes of CSR reporting, relatable to both sets of reports. These include generality, transparency, and power neutrality.

Firstly, the ‘generality’ dimension maintains that discussions should be open to all interested parties. In the campaigners’ reports, direct participation and feedback from stakeholders including the often disempowered “silent stakeholders” (Cowton 2008: 25; Jamali 2008: 217) shows that the campaigners are in support of participants’ full expression of interests. The “alternative speaking positions” (Powers 2001: 62) of the campaigners in the reports, in reproducing voices of those addressed by the discourse as well as fostering or challenging existing relations through the discourse, allows readers and the public at large to view and engage in the situation from different perspectives. This diversity of perspectives and interjection of multiple voices has appropriately exemplified CSR discourse as a platform for a broadly participative societal dialogue.

In the CSR reports, however, discussions about CSR are done unilaterally. Although it could be argued that the way companies, as authors of the reports, pivot the discourse around the

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company-­‐Self is justifiable, within this self-­‐centred discourse the company-­‐Self is repeatedly constructed and re-­‐constructed, in construing social realities and subject positions for other social actors that are favourable to themselves, obscuring individual causation and control. The workers, who are often seen as peripheral in society, are typically left voiceless in the CSR reports and merely talked about as general subject matter. Workers are deprived of the opportunity to voice their concerns and distress, let alone having the right to question assertions made about them by other powerful groups, or access to direct participation to contribute to the construction of CSR discourse.

Secondly, the ‘transparency’ dimension maintains that every party must reveal their goals and intentions relevant to the issue. Transparency, in CSR communication terms, is the engagement with and consultation of stakeholders in the data-­‐gathering process, as well as the consideration of their reactions to the data (Coombs and Holladay 2011: 113). In the campaigners’ reports, the peripheral groups have made their interests known publicly to other parties, in addition to campaigners pinpointing who should be held responsibility to regardless of their position in the supply chain hierarchy. Discussion of problems in the supply chain is addressed as a democratic discourse rather than a one-­‐way communication. Although there is no one clear way to assure how transparent a report is, as Reynolds and Yuthas (2008: 60) point out, ongoing interaction and engagement over time can help build trust and overcome differences, or reveal the true motives of stakeholder participants.

However, in the CSR reports the lack of engagement with those who are foremostly affected by the disasters has acutely hindered the transparency process. Instead, the “multiplicity of competing narratives” (Tyler 2005: 566); in other words companies’ narration between buffering negative effects and strengthening positive image, as well as different subject-­‐positioning of self in relation to others, shows that companies’ foremost concerns are often surrounding their own reputation.

This “reputation discourse” (Bebbington et al. 2008: 342) or construction of a favourable self-­‐ presentation includes companies silencing out core problems and overstating other charitable deeds peripheral to the core issues. Motives such as this detract from their ability as well as the ability of the public to understand an issue from each other’s perspective, and so “impede formation of solutions grounded in mutual consensus” (Reynolds and Yuthas 2008: 60).

Thirdly, the ‘power neutrality’ dimension maintains that discussion must be free from coercion.

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Although the institutional nature of the campaigners might suggest a social hierarchical difference between the campaigners and the marginalized stakeholders, in this condition the campaigners have made an earnest effort in providing conditions for democratic participation. The campaigners, in seeking engagement and encouraging the full participation of stakeholders, have recognized the importance of power neutrality.

However, power inequality is salient in the CSR reports. For example, when companies use the Codes of Conduct to impose commands on the local suppliers, the Codes do not act merely as technical tools to moderate labour regimes, but also, as Dunn (2005) explains, to generate social regimes of power and inequality. The suppliers are passive targets of the discourse, being told what to do or what to believe in; and in times of crisis, companies have exploited the Codes to hold it against the suppliers. Codes of conduct as regulators could undeniably enforce workplace safety and labour justice; however, as standards are never neutral (Dunn 2005: 181); the Codes as bearer of judgement could also be creators of values which magnify social hierarchies. This accords with the assertion by Schmeltz (2012: 30) that communication between companies and stakeholders will always be asymmetrical if communication always take place on the companies’ terms (Schmeltz 2012: 30).

Following this line of thought, it can reasonably be argued that the companies’ purpose in CSR reporting has more to do with managing reputation than with concern for stakeholders’ interests.

Hence, the lack of a relational approach to CSR in the companies’ C SR reports, which pivot on a self-­‐ centred discourse magnified by the polarization between company-­‐Self and the Other stakeholders, might explain the current stalemate of economic versus ethical models in CSR; in other words, the taboo of continuous economic growth (Kallio, 2007).The taboo of continuous economic growth lies at the heart of the ideological divide between those who advocate an economic model of CSR and those who advocate an ethical model of CSR (Driver 2006: 337; Kallio 2007: 169; Windsor 2001: 225). The former doctrine sees CSR as predominantly driven by corporates’ interest, and thus contradictions that threaten their corporate image and wealth creation exist in order not to “challenge the primacy of shareholders” (Belal and Cooper 2011: 654). The latter ideology argues that corporations should look beyond economic performance and undertake CSR for ethical reasons alone (Ennals 2011: 144). This study has demonstrated that the companies’ narrowly defined, “unidimensional, stable and simplistic” (Driver 2006: 338) perception of self versus non-­‐ self, business versus society, is a culprit in hindering the development of CSR. Sadly, this 49

self versus non-­‐self notion and self-­‐protecting acts are even more prevalent in times of crisis like that of the Rana Plaza collapse, when one would expect companies to resist the urge to dominate, attend to dissent, encourage multivoiced responses (Tyler 2005: 570), and make an effort towards the mitigation of suffering. However, as Kallio(2007: 167) describes, taboos are potential windows for social change: as taboos break, social reality changes. Every process of imbalance can lead to change (Riegel 1976: 690). Hence, it is hoped that the implications of the present study in studying labour injustice in the context of the Bangladesh factory disasters, analysing the dialectical-­‐ relationship between the CSR reports and social justice campaigners, as well as open discussion of the stalemate between economic versus ethical models in CSR, no longer leave delicate issues “under erasure” (Parker 2003: 202) and hence contribute to challenging the status quo (Kallio 2007: 166).

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6 Conclusion 6.1 Contribution of the study The study’s application of a dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA was driven by a call (Dhanesh 2014: 159) to employ a dialectical lens in analysing the complexities and contradiction that underlie the discourses of CSR. The findings have demonstrated that the approach has great analytical potential for understanding the opposition of dynamic forces in societies. This is especially significant because the dialectical–relational approach to CDA of both sets of reports has revealed that the dominant CSR report discourse tends to suppress the multiple voices of marginalised stakeholders, particularly during discursive events like that of the Rana Plaza tragedy; whereas the social justice campaigners’ reports have provide a more democratic platform for the interjection of multiple voices into the public discourse. An analytical focus on intertextuality has also shown how the restructuring and transforming of existing discourse can assist the meaning-­‐making process, in which new situations or resolutions could provide richer insights into the subject matter. An analysis of presuppositions has also helped to understand what common ground, shared beliefs or manipulated ideologies have shaped the production of texts, revealing an exercise of power through texts. All in all, the dialectical-­‐relational approach to CDA with a focus on intertextuality and presupposition has illustrated the co-­‐existence and dialectical struggle of positions and ideologies among multiple roles in the ready-­‐made garment sector, thus opening spaces for engaging diverse perspectives and creating holistic understanding of the contradictions, oppositions, and tensions in society.

6.2 Limitations of the study One limitation of the study concerns what might be conceived of as an imbalance in size between the two data sets, namely that the CSR reports, of which there were 10, averaged 30 pages in length, whereas the reports by social justice campaigners numbered two. They were however sufficiently representative of their kind to facilitate the dialectical approach selected. Secondly, the notion of analysis by proxy might be raised by critics of CDA as a limitation (O’Halloran 2005), in the sense that the researcher acting to redress a social wrong is not a member of the target audience or one of the disempowered stakeholders (if indeed they are separate groups). More 51

importantly, perhaps, the present study has overlooked other media involved in CSR communication which might have nurtured a more ‘multivoiced’ interaction between companies and stakeholders. The CSR discourse in the aftermath of the disaster was possibly communicated via a variety of media such as websites, blogs, social networking sites, intra-­‐company communications and strategies or advertisements, and might provide a different perspective on the question of a relational stakeholder approach to CSR.

6.3 Recommendations for future research One potentially useful way forward to broaden the company-­‐stakeholder interaction analysis of the relational stakeholder approach to CSR is to include various CSR communication genres to see if the tentative conclusions reached will hold up with a more varied data set. In the same vein, the analysis could be enriched through the inclusion of interactional analysis of, for example, conversations between companies and stakeholders during news conferences to create a meta-­‐ narrative about companies’ approach to stakeholders. Given the literature on the dialectical-­‐ relational approach to CDA suggests that it is able to provide insights into how a given situation is acted upon by another situation resulting in a ‘hybridisation of discourse’ (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999: 14), a second possible avenue of research in this area would be to take an ‘interdiscursivity’ based cross-­‐genre approach – for example, a dialectical-­‐relational analysis of interviews and press releases – in order to understand the effect of mixing of diverse genres, discourses, or styles associated with the institutional and social meanings behind the texts.

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