Media Portrayals of Post-Rana Plaza CSR Initiatives for Worker Safety: Perspectives on Legitimacy From Bangladesh, the UK and the USA

The literature on worker protection in global supply chains typically has a global North focus. This paper seeks to capture and compare global North and global South societal perceptions of initiatives for worker safety in the Bangladesh apparel industry after the Rana Plaza disaster. It offers an analysis of UK, USA and Bangladesh mainstream media coverage of two key initiatives: the European ‘Accord’ and the North American ‘Alliance’. It uses organizational legitimacy as a lens to evaluate coverage of the initiatives during their inception, operationalization, and transition. Media in the UK and the US at the inception stage emphasize moral legitimacy in terms of the initiatives’ design and governance processes (e.g., concerning stakeholder inclusion) and pragmatic legitimacy in terms of their ‘effectiveness’ (e.g., concerning safety improvements). Bangladesh media highlight pragmatic legitimacy at the implementation stage around the initiatives’ impact on ‘efficiency’ (e.g., concerning supply chain productivity). These differences between Bangladesh and US/UK media raise questions about the ability of global supply chain initiatives simultaneously to be deemed legitimate by global North and global South societies. The paper also demonstrates and reflects on the relative neglect of the issue of worker safety in both sets of media coverage.