College apparel and provider sourcing strategies

A New York Times article (Sept 23, 2011) describes frustration expressed by student groups at Ohio State and University of Southern California because contracts for manufacturing their school apparel was granted to a unit of the Dallas Cowboys that has used sweatshop labor in the past. The students point to an El Salvador plant that had contaminated water and forced overtime and a plant in Indonesia that was closed with no worker payments. Should students have the right to dictate sourcing decisions at their University ? Should the University be held responsible for monitoring and ensuring supplier conformance to quality or should this process be managed by contract penalties ? If the supplier in turn uses an agent for sourcing does responsibility for compliance transfer to the agent or country of location of manufacturing ?

About aviyer2010

Professor
This entry was posted in Global Contexts, Operations Management, Supply Chain Issues and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

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