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Normalizing Oppression in the Global Supply Chain of Fast Fashion Industry: An

Inquiry from Accounting and Management Practices

Abstract

Accounting and its relation to oppression, i.e., why and how a workforce in the global supply chain

has been systematically, structurally and institutionally oppressed, is inadequately investigated in

the accounting literature. This study enhances our understanding by delineating the association of

accounting and management practices with normalizing oppression beyond the protected

characteristics of a social group. It shows that oppression of workers begins with the exploitative

subcontracting business model and the hegemony of Western retailers towards manufacturing

countries because of widespread power differences. The multifaceted oppression such as abuse,

punish, humiliation, sexual harassment, physically assault, and even killing of workers are

normalized through accounting controls, social and cultural norms, state laws and regulations and

state-led violence in manufacturing factories. It appears that oppression becomes normalize when

accounting (and absence of accounting) practices rationalize, socialize, and institutionalize the

oppressive business model of supply chain and hegemonic managerial styles of local factories to

secure the benefits of big retailers, capitalists, manufacturers, politicians, and state legislators of an

undemocratic/less-democratic country. Sustainable accounting practices, accountability, and good

governance with vigilant laws thus are required to eradicate oppression from the global supply

chain.

Keywords: accounting, democracy, fashion industry, normalization, oppression, supply chain

Introduction

Critical accounting researchers have captured how accounting practices accommodate different

forms of oppression (although they do not use the word ‘oppression’ with the exception of Baker

& Brewis, in press) on the cotton fields where millions of African descendants were enslaved for

millennia (Annisette, 2009; Pinto & West, 2017; Rodrigues & Craig, 2018; Rosenthal, 2018). The

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dreadful episodes of slavery in the cotton fields might have disappeared but various forms of

oppression (e.g., modern slavery) still exist with the combination of old and new practices in the

supply chain including fast fashion industry (O’Mahoney, Vincent, & Harley, 2018). Such

oppression can be achieved through capitalist institutions, organized power, the casualization of

work, low minimum wages, and exploitative international supply chains, as well as social, cultural,

and political actualization, legitimation, and reproduction (McCarthy, Soundararajan, & Taylor,

2020; Martí & Fernández, 2013; Spence & Rinaldi, 2014). Accounting researchers somehow

neglect to explore the existence of on-going oppression but limited their investigation within the

violation of human rights1 in the fast fashion industry (Islam, Deegan, & Haque, in press). For

instance, Christ, Rao, & Burritt (2019) argue that selected retail organizations in Australia are

reluctant to disclose their practices of modern slavery. Similarly, Islam et al. (in press) recommend

that the introduction of mandatory human rights disclosure regulations and strict monitoring could

eradicate the violation of human rights in modern corporations.

The supply chain literature, however, argues that modern slavery like oppression disappear from

companies’ reports because the global supply chain is primarily concerned with the flow of physical

materials, rather than the suppliers of labor (Barrientos, 2008). Besides, contractual employment

is often not directly addressed in companies’ codes of practice, which may have taken advantage

of ambiguous terms including supplier and employee (New, 2015). Also, the big retailers and high-

end brands outsource their products from various factories (compliance and non-compliance)

located in a weak regulatory and politically oppressive country which denies the existence of

unethical and oppressive labor practices (McCarthy et al., 2020; Varman & Al-Amoudi, 2016).

Social, cultural, and political actualization; legitimation and reproduction; discourses and social

relations, also enable global organizations to oppress the workers in the global supply chain

1 Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination (United Nation, https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/human-rights/).

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(LeBaron & Phillips, 2019; Soundararajan, Khan, & Tarba, 2018). As a result, oppression cannot

be traced in the global supply chain because it is less visible in organizational reporting systems

and operate covertly (see also Gold, Trautrims, & Trodd, 2015), which need further investigation.

Considering the complex outsourcing business practices and covert slavery like labor practices in

the global supply chain, a holistic approach is required to understand oppression and its

normalization process. The on-going oppression of workers in the global supply chain is much

wider and deeper as it involves individual and collective modes of behaviors at the institutional

level that dominate and control a specific group to secure an economic, psychological, and political

advantage (LeBaron & Phillips, 2019). After all, “oppression is the social art of placing severe

restrictions on an individual group which is devalued, exploited, and deprived of privileges by a

powerful individual or group” (Barker, 2003: 307). Accounting researchers should treat oppression

as an endemic feature in the global supply chain where large companies are an integral part, rather

than consider it as ‘a merely exogenous problem’ that companies have a responsibility to address

simply in annual reports (New, 2015). Caruana, Crane, Gold, & LeBaron (2020) suggest that an

in-depth field study is, therefore, required to understand how accounting practices promote and

sustain multifaceted oppression in the global supply chain. This study contributes to accounting

and supply chain literature by unravelling why and how accounting controls normalize oppression

over the workers of the garment industry in Bangladesh, an important supplier of the global supply

chain of fast fashion for many decades.

The objectives of this study are twofold. First, it is motivated by the aim of enhancing our

understanding of oppression by investigating its connection with accounting. Contemporary

accounting literature overlooks how a specific group of people has been subjected to oppression,

not because of their protected characteristics (e.g., age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and may

others) but because of their association with specific jobs such as cloth-making. The cloth-makers

(i.e., weavers, cotton farmers, and factory workers) of Bangladesh have been systematically,

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structurally, and institutionally oppressed since the fifteen centuries, which has resulted in forced

displacement, extinction, great famines, deforestation, and the deaths of millions of people (see

Beckert, 2014). It posits two important observations: first, accounting researchers tend to overlook

the historical connection between accounting practices and oppression which has been continuing

in the global supply chain for hundreds of years. Second, accounting scholars are not excluded

from cultural imperialism as they document slavery on the cotton fields of Western societies (Pinto

& West, 2017; Rodrigues & Craig, 2018; Rosenthal, 2018) but ignore the systematic and structural

oppression of cloth-makers in India. This study wishes to make the invisible visible by investigating

how and why accounting and management control are connected in promoting and sustaining

oppression over workers in suppliers’ country.

Second, this study wishes to provide a better understanding of the normalization of oppression.

The existing literature views oppression as a 'structural, institutional and social injustice' towards a

specific social group, mainly Blacks, Hispanic, Jews, Arabs, Asians, women, the LGBT community,

the disabled, and the working-class (see, Cudd, 2005; Young, 1990). The existing theories,

however, do not provide an adequate understanding of oppression from the ‘modes of production’

and its normalization process. For instance, beyond these groups, are the workforce of the global

supply chain not oppressed because of the existing outsourcing business model. If it is, then how

they are oppressed. What are the roles of accounting? Why and how oppression of workers may

normalize in the global supply chain? I, therefore, offer a working definition in which “Oppression

is the calculated accounting (and other) control mechanisms routinely applied by the powerful

agents to harm (i.e., financially, psychologically, and/or physically) the powerless agents to secure

economic, social, and political benefits. Such oppression is normalized in a society, when powerful

agents collectively and institutionally justify it as necessary tool to protect their hegemony through

organizational policies, social structure, social norms, cultural beliefs, political ideologies as well as

(violating, misinterpreting, or influencing) state laws”. The contemporary research in accounting

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provides inadequate explanation of why and how a workforce in the global supply chain has been

oppressed through accounting and other institutional, social, cultural, and political control

mechanisms. This study is somewhat unique as it aims to explore why and how dominating

accounting control mechanisms normalize oppression in the global supply chain of fast fashion.

This paper is structured as follows. How accounting research addresses oppression in the context

of a supply chain is critically evaluated in the next section. Afterwards, the literature on the

normalization process is summarized through critical remarks. A summary of data generation and

analysis is explained next. Relying on interview data, the next section depicts how accounting and

management practices relate to normalizing oppression. Finally, the importance and implications

of this study are discussed, followed by a conclusion.

Critical accounting research in oppression

Accounting researchers have explored how accounting is associated with oppression. As such,

accounting has been incriminated with some of the hideous crimes2 of humanity, including slavery

(Pinto & West, 2017; Rodrigues & Craig, 2018). Accounting scholars have revealed how

accounting played the most important role in the birth, legitimization, and institutionalization of

slavery (Rosenthal, 2018). They have also revealed how an entire race of humankind was

commodified, objectified, and dehumanized through oppressive accounting practices (e.g., value,

turnout, productivity, and rental incomes), being treated as they were farm animals or property

(Fleischman & Tyson, 2004). To uphold their economic benefit and social power, slave owners

not only introduced oppressive managerial techniques (e.g., inventory, depreciation, and lynching)

but also introduced to government accounting and taxation policies necessary for the development

of a slave economy (Rodrigues & Craig, 2018). Of course, ancient slavery is history, but many

2 Accounting scholars also investigated other forms of oppression including the holocaust, imperialism, extortion, and war. Most of the existing studies primarily focus on protected characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and others. This study limits its focus on the workforce of the global supply chain of fast fashion.

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suppliers located in emerging economies participate in today’s global supply chain explicitly and

legitimately upholds slavery-like oppression (Crane, 2013; O’Mahoney et al., 2018).

Despite their rigorous investigation on slavery, accounting scholars have been surprisingly lacking

in addressing oppression in today’s global supply chain. The commercial dynamics among

accounting practices, labor control, violation of human rights, exploitative outsourcing business

model, and other inhumane business practices in the global supply chain remain uninvestigated in

the accounting literature. Among very few, Carmona and Gutierrez (2006) explore the disciplinary

regimes of accounting relating to the discourse of outsourcing in early 20th century. They argue

that outsourcing ‘serves the purpose of acquiring access to a cheap workforce’ (p. 898), which

oftentimes ‘involves the deployment of disciplinary practices beyond organizational boundaries’,

including torture and imprisonment (p. 880). Islam et al. (in press) also argue that lead firms and

their local manufacturers have a lack of moral power (i.e., intention, capability, and standing) to

ensure human rights in fast fashion supply chain. Others have also addressed ‘modern slavery’

practices in the supply chain through content analysis of companies’ reports (Christ et al., 2019).

The supply chain literature argues that modern slavery often covertly taking place through coercive

revenue yield, traditional auditing, and over-reliance on government regulations diluted by

lobbying activities in global supply chain (see Caruana et al., 2020). The existing accounting studies

have thus failed to separate the distinctive characteristics of oppression from the wider, longer,

and deeper perspectives.

To understand the multifaceted oppression of workers in supply chain, accounting researchers,

therefore, need to go into the field as other discipline do. For instance, through in-depth analysis

and observation, Varman and Al-Amoudi (2016) examine how Coca-Cola benefits from the supply

chain and sustains its dominance by deploying violence over the workers of a bottling plant in an

Indian village. Recently, Alamgir and Banerjee (2019) reveal that the reconfiguration of state power

to meet the demands of global supply chains involves the use of state violence to suppress dissent,

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while undermining labor rights and working conditions. Taking inspiration from these studies, I

investigate the embeddedness of accounting and other management practices with social practices,

cultural norms, organizational rules and regulations, institutional laws and policies, and political

discourses which may normalize oppression in the supply chain.

Understanding the process of normalized oppression

Social theorists view oppression as a structural social injustice that is embedded within norms,

habits, symbols, and institutional rules (Cudd, 2005; Young, 1990). Such injustice can be

perpetrated through social institutions, practices, and norms using direct and indirect material and

psychological forces that violate justice over dominated social groups by dominant social groups

(Cudd, 2005). Why is a social group oppressed by another social group? Cudd (2005) explains that

because of the four existing conditions such as harm condition (i.e. individuals are harmed by

institutional practices including rules, laws, expectations, stereotypes, rituals, and behavioral

norms); group condition (i.e. individuals suffer because of their membership in a social group);

privilege condition (i.e. dominant social group benefits from institutional practice); and finally,

coercion condition (i.e. there is unjustified coercion or force that brings about harm). Both Young

and Cudd have helped us to understand the tactics and causes of oppression in a society. However,

they overly focused on protected characteristics (e.g., class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and

disability) to understand the inequality and injustice in American society. Their arguments are,

therefore, limited to defining the metaphysical role between individuals (i.e., micro perspectives)

and groups (i.e., macro/Marxist perspectives) to understand oppression in the context of modern

organizations (Allen, 2008; Taylor, 2016).

The supply chain literature shows that extreme forms of labor controls, the casualization of work,

gig economy, insecure work, low wages, and many others, have contributed to oppression of

workers in global supply chain (McCarthy et al., 2020; LeBaron & Philips 2019; Spence & Rinaldi,

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2014). Such oppression is not an isolated, exceptional, or discrete phenomenon. Rather, it is a

form of practices, rules, devices, and discourse (Martí & Fernández, 2013), which does not exist

in a vacuum, but is rather embedded within material, cultural and discursive contexts for their

actualization, legitimation, and reproduction (O’Mahoney et al., 2018). Oppression can also be

subtle but pervasive because of complex forms of power, rationality of individuals and groups,

organizational rules and regulations, social and cultural norms, social omission, repressive

government policies, and systematic violence (Harvey, 2010). Research argues that when an

oppressive act has become a routine behavior: internalized by organizational members as a

permissible and desirable practice; embedded in organizational structure and processes;

rationalized, socialized, and institutionalized across similar organizations, then it creates an ‘unholy

trinity’, an accepted normalized behavior (Ashforth & Anand, 2003).

Besides, when a few members of a field initiate immoral behaviors and transform these behaviors

into incremental and collective norms, cultures, and policies which are difficult to change, then

such behaviors become normalized within that field (Ashforth & Anand, 2003). Extending the

understanding of normalization, Misangyi, Weaver, and Elms (2008) argue that along with

organizational members and organizations, a community (where the organizations are located)

may develop widespread institutional beliefs and structures that normalize certain unethical and

immoral behaviors over time. They highlight the corporate misconducts in America which took

place not purely because of the unethical behaviors of individual, group, or organizations, but

rather through social and cultural norms across corporate communities. If the widespread

misconducts are unchecked but systematically supported within an industry, then such behaviors

are likely to become normalized within the community or industry and, thus, difficult to eradicate

(Earle, Spicer, & Peter, 2010; Spicer, 2009). As Ashforth and Anand (2003: 42) writes,

“normalization is the process that not only enables individuals to leech off society while

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maintaining a self-image of probity but embeds and routinizes that behavior in organizations so

that it may be practiced on a wider scale and perpetuated indefinitely”.

To investigate the complex dynamics of collective phenomena (i.e., institutional and social) that

enable the continuation of immoral and inhuman business practices across organizations,

academic researchers should move beyond individual and organizational phenomena (micro and

macro) and adopt wider perspectives (i.e., economic, cultural, social, and political) across industries

(Ashforth, Gioia, Robinson, & Trevino, 2008; Misangyi et al., 2008). I adopt a similar philosophy

to investigate the ongoing oppression of workers and its relation to accounting practices by asking

two questions. First, how, and to what extent, powerful agents in global supply chain may

introduce, rationalize, and institutionalize certain accounting (and other) control mechanisms to

oppress the powerless workers working on the shopfloor of clothing factories. Second, why the

existing social structure, social norms, cultural values, and political dynamics, and state laws may

support the powerful agents of supply chain to normalize such oppression across the industry.

Context of this study

The demand for ‘Made in Bangladesh’ has always been top ranked in the global supply chain for

centuries. The legendary muslin was the first global consumer commodity from the eleventh to

fifteenth centuries which Marco Polo described: “the finest and most beautiful cotton that are to

be found in any part of the world” (cited in Beckert, 2014: 8). Like European traders and

merchants, today’s global retailers and big brands have always admired the finest quality, but

cheapest ready-made garments (RMG) produced in Bangladesh (Beckert, 2014). However, the

cloth-makers (i.e., cotton farmer, weavers, and factory workers) of Bangladesh have always been

oppressed through forced migration, violence, political power, and patronization. The working

conditions of the factories under the Mughal dynasty were oppressive as weavers were forced to

work long hours with a very low wage, which diminished their skills and efficiencies. When the

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Mughal Emperor Akbar displaced most of the skilled weavers from their villages to factories, a

massive shortage of skilled weavers appeared across the Bengal (present Bangladesh). The

oppression of weavers deteriorated the young children of weavers who were deprived of the ability

to learn skillful weaving and spinning techniques (see Verma, 1994).

After the Mughals, the Europeans became involved in cotton production and build their fortunes

on imperial expansion, expropriation, and slavery. Combining their commitments to the cotton

trade with industrial espionage, restrictive trade regulations, the domination of territories,

capturing of labor, removal of indigenous inhabitants, and state-sponsored violence, they

normalized oppression by establishing colonies (Beckert, 2014). At regular intervals, they

introduced laws including the ‘Act for the Better Suppression of Frauds’, the ‘Criminal Law’, and

the ‘Indian Contract Act’ between 1851 and 1872 (Dantwala, 1947), which coerced cotton farmers

not to produce any other crops (e.g., rice) or any other cotton (except the specific seeds) on their

lands. Anyone doing otherwise faced severe oppression, including violence and imprisonment

(Birla, 2009). The European colonizers also tightened their control in cotton trade by passing the

‘Board of Trade’ in 1875 (Beckert, 2014) ensuring that weavers and their family members were

punished (e.g., paying more tax, losing their handlooms, and tortured) if they were found doing

business except with company agents (Hossain, 1979). The normalized oppression resulted in the

disappearance of weavers from the Bengal as 4 to 6 million weavers lost their jobs, or became day

laborers or homeless (Roy, 2020). Besides, concentrating only on cotton production decreased

food production and inflated food prices more than 325 percent which caused some of the worst

famines (i.e., Great Bengal famine in 1769-1773, Chalisa famine in 1783-1784, Orissa famine in

1886, and Bihar famine in 1873-74) in the history of mankind, which killed more than 36 million

people in Bengal alone (Sen, 1981).

The long oppression of cloth-makers in Bangladesh temporarily declined with the end of British

colonization but has resumed after the introduction of a ‘multi-fiber agreement’ in 1974.

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Bangladesh has become an ideal destination which provides lower prices, better quality, huge

capacity, speed, and lower risk (Berg, Hedrich, Kempf, & Tochtermann, 2011). Unlike the

European merchants, retailers and brands of global supply chain do not capture the land, enslave

the people, or colonize Bangladesh, but instead invite Bangladeshi manufacturers to compete each

other with the cheapest price (Quark, 2011). They have succeeded as more than 4.4. million

workers produce fast fashion for global supply chain in nearly 6,000 garment compliance factories.

The economy of Bangladesh is overly reliant on the garment industry, as it contributes 81 percent

of total export earnings, equal to 12.36 percent of the country’s GDP (www.bgmea.com.bd). This

has made suppliers ultra-rich and politically powerful, but the workers impoverished, vulnerable

and powerless, more like modern slaves (Caruana et al., 2020; Gold et al., 2015). The world has

seen the horror of Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashion, which killed more than 1,212 workers and

injured several thousands (Islam et al., in press). Accounting research ignores the systematic,

structural, and institutional oppression of workers in the global supply chain of fast fashion

industry. This study investigates normalizing oppression from the wider and deeper perspectives

of accounting in the context of Bangladesh garment industry.

Data generation and analysis

This study used a qualitative research approach to explore how accounting practices promote and

sustain oppression in the supply chain of fashion industry. The garment industry of Bangladesh

has remained constantly in the spotlight for its oppression following the fire of Tazreen Fashion

and collapse of Rana Plaza (Alamgir & Banerjee, 2019; Islam et al., 2020). The scrutiny of non-

governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media make it difficult for researchers to gain access

to factories to investigate the ongoing oppression. Despite this constraint, through my professional

connections, I first interviewed thirty workers (twenty females and ten males) from five

compliance factories located in Dhaka and its nearby areas. Interviews were conducted in the

offices of a local NGO ensuring that workers were not placed at risk, as published reports reveal

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that workers face violence if they speak to researchers or journalists (Human Rights Watch, 2015).

Then, I interviewed five owners and five managers from the same five factories. During the

interviews, I encouraged both workers, managers, and owners to narrate their experiences and

actions. This method has widely been used and encouraged in organizational research in recent

years because through narration, organizational actors do not simply tell a story, but rather provide

a response when being held accountable for themselves (see Riach, Rumens, & Tyler, 2016). These

key stakeholders also helped me to understand how a clothing factory designs its accounting and

management practices which led (intentionally and unintentionally) to oppress workers on the

shopfloor of clothing factories.

Earle et al. (2010) suggest that researchers should include members of civil society to

understanding the growth and persistence of organizational oppression within a community.

Therefore, I invited some buying houses’ (represented international brands and retailers in

Bangladesh) representatives, few members of the Ministry of Labor, Department of Labor,

Accord, and Alliance for interview. Unfortunately, they all denied participating in this study.

Afterwards, I interviewed two academic researchers, one journalist, and seven members of a local

NGO to make sense of macro level perception of normalized oppression. All the fifty interviews

(see Table 1) lasted between 20 and 140 minutes each, and were audio-recorded and transcribed

verbatim, except for three where detailed notes were taken.

To develop a deeper understanding at the meso level, I also conducted a focus group discussion

with ten participants (i.e., six workers, two supervisors, one academic researcher, and one

journalist). The discussion lasted for two and a half hours. It was also audio-recorded and

transcribed verbatim. Finally, I conducted forty hours of non-participant observations on the

shopfloors of those five factories (i.e., eight hours in each factory), which provided me first-hand

access to witness working conditions and how workers were treated on the shopfloor of clothing

factories in Bangladesh. The interview and observational data were supplemented with published

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documents mainly produced by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and International Labor

Organization (ILO), as well as local and international newspapers to enhance my understanding

of the wider and deeper nature of oppression and its normalization process.

[INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]

I used ‘thematic analysis’ (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to examine the interrelationships among the

discourses, social practices, power relations, and ideologies of the participants of the global supply

chain. It helped me to explore the social construction of shared realities and to pay special attention

to the influence of power and the perpetuation of oppression by the powerful agents at various

levels of supply chain. I used open coding approach to develop the themes at three levels (micro,

meso, and macro) of analysis. I paid particular attention to understand the power differences

among the agents of supply chain at various levels and how the power relations influence these

agents to appear oppressive. I was also interested to find connections between accounting and

normalizing oppression at three levels addressing the research objectives. A constant back and

forth between the data at three levels was performed to enhance familiarization with the data. This

also helped to understand the economic conditions, social structures, cultural norms and beliefs,

and the language of participants and other forms of discourses operating within this society (Braun

& Clarke, 2006). Open codes further helped me to develop themes relating to oppressive

accounting controls, management practices, labor control, and their normalization process.

Afterwards, a careful measurement was taken which did not purely rely on the accounts of

interviewees, but rather was as reflexive as possible to highlight the interview process and make

sense of interviewees’ accounts to ensure the relevance of generated themes (Riach et al., 2016)

which I present in the following section.

Findings: Production and reproduction of multifaceted oppression

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The analysis of data (e.g., final themes emerged from the analysis) lead me to adopt some of

Young’s (1990) categorization of oppression such as powerlessness, exploitation, marginalization,

and violence as sub-headings in this section. Young pluralizes various forms of oppression to

eschew the over-simplification of reductionism (Dubrosky, 2013), as she argues that each type of

oppression can be operationalized (by a powerful and privileged group such as lead firms and

suppliers of clothing factories) to enhance our understanding of the wider and deeper economic,

social, and political context of a society. Her pluralization provides a better understanding of the

on-going oppression in the global supply chain of fast fashion. In this section, first I explained

how the power differences among the agents at various level in supply chain initiate economic and

political pressure which turns into oppression as it moves on the shopfloor. Second, I provide

accounts of ongoing oppression where workers on the shopfloor were exploited, abused, and

punished through accounting control regimes. Third, I explain how 3.6 million women workers

have been humiliated, sexually harassed, and marginalized through performance measurement as

well as social norms, cultural beliefs, and male hegemony. Finally, I describe how the collective

bargaining of workers were squeezed through violence carried out by the owners, managers,

members of ruling political party, and the state agencies. Also, how the accounting practices,

organizational rules and regulation, institutional laws, social segregation, stereotyped beliefs,

cultural norms, and political and bureaucratic power normalized multifaceted oppression in the

global supply chain.

Powerlessness: The fundamental root of outsourcing business

The lead firms continuously pressurize the suppliers located in developing countries to provide

the best quality product within a short-lead time and possibly the cheapest price has well

documented in academic literature (Reusen & Stouthuysen, 2017; Hammer & Plugor, 2019; Spence

& Rinaldi, 2014). However, the power-struggle between a lead firm and supplier in the global

supply chain remains under-investigated. This study understands that if local suppliers intend to

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negotiate, they received constant threats from lead firms including cancelling orders, changing

suppliers, and moving business to competitor countries. The world has observed how the lead

firms of USA (i.e., Walmart, GAP, JC Penny, Khol’s, and Urban Outfitters) and the UK (i.e.,

Arcadia group, Edenborough Wooden Mill, and ASOS) misused their power by cancelling billions

of dollars of sales orders (i.e., work-in-progress, produced, ready to transport, and shipped) which

has crippled the economy of suppliers’ country including Bangladesh (The Wall Street Journal,

2020). The analysis of this study revealed the lead firms’ misuse of power towards the suppliers in

Bangladesh which make them to live in a constant fear that European and American retailers could

cancel their orders at any time without providing any justification. One of the owners (O: 3) said:

We [he and his partners] are trapped. We have invested millions of dollars in this business.

But sometimes, we feel to shut it down. We cannot ask for a fair price for our products.

We are offering the lowest possible price. But again, the buyers keep pressuring us to

reduce the cost even further. If we say no, then they threaten us to move somewhere else.

We do not have any power to resist but bend down to them.

Like their ancestors, European and American retailers also believe that they are our masters

because we are overly reliant on them, thus, must follow their demands, said by another owner

(O: 1). He explained an incident where he showed a specific design of a T-Shirt to an American

buyer. The buyer liked it but demanded an alteration to the design by putting a different color

pocket on it and add some specific buttons which would cost extra money. However, the buyer

was not willing to adjust the price, but pressurized the local supplier to accept the order. The owner

had no choice but to accept the order. He said, “if I did not accept the order, then words will be

out there that I am difficult to do business with which would cost me more”. Similar types of

incidents were shared by other owners who felt that Western retailers make unreasonable demands

to oppress the local manufacturers. Such power differences and misuses of power often put

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additional risk on the local suppliers who must bear all the additional costs. One of the owners (O:

2) explained:

In 2007, we were unable to make a shipment because of the cyclone Sidr. Roads were

destroyed and the port was shut down. But one of the retailers forced us to make an air

shipment. It threatened us to cancel the order and pay nothing if we do not make the air

shipment. We did not have any choices but to make it happen. It cost us three times more

than usual. We made a loss from this order.

Indeed, the Western retailers misuse their power that have been acknowledged by academic

researchers. At the same time, most of the international laws relating to global supply chain also

favor the lead firms but oppress the suppliers of emerging economies including Bangladesh.

During COVID-19 pandemic, Western retailers have misinterpreted the clause of force majeure and

cancelled sales orders worth of billion dollars which resulted in a temporary job loss for 2.17

million workers. According to the International Commercial Contracts of the Vienna Convention

(Article 7.1.1), the clause of force majeure was inappropriately interpreted by most of the Western

retailers in this instance (Anner, 2020).

The imbalance of power gets wider at the bottom of the supply chain as the suppliers of

Bangladesh also possess more economic, social, and political power than shopfloor workers

because of their direct association with state politics. For example, the owner of the first clothing

factory ‘Desh Garment’, Noorul Quader Khan, was a retired bureaucrat of Bangladesh

government. It appeared that he persuaded his friends and colleagues (e.g., some of the cabinet

ministers, the cabinet secretary, and the governor of the central bank and many others) to convince

the then President of Bangladesh to provide him necessary help to establish the factory. The

President had a meeting with the chairman of Daewoo, a Korean company, and agreed to provide

all the support if Daewoo agreed to engage in a joint venture with Mr Khan (see Siddiqui, 2004).

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Since then, the garment industry of Bangladesh and state politics have become the two sides of

the same coin. Currently, 70 percent of the members of parliament (MPs) have business

conglomerates, many of them are garment suppliers. A few of them are also the ministers of

important ministries (e.g., Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Finance),

which provide direct services to the garment industry (Liton & Molla, 2018). Besides, many retired

and current bureaucrats, high-ranking army and police officers, and leaders of political parties also

own multiple clothing factories. Their close association with state politics and bureaucracy provide

them with unlimited power to oppress the millions of workers by bending and violating the state

laws and regulations. For instance, according to the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (amended in

2013), all employers must provide an appointment letter to workers. In reality, none of the workers

I interviewed received an ‘appointment letter’ from their factories. The owners purposely avoided

issuing an appointment letter, aiming to make the workers powerless. One of the owners (O: 4)

justified:

Giving an appointment letter is not a good idea. It will restrict us in many ways. Lots of

legal problems would arise because of it. Let’s say, workers cannot easily leave the jobs and

we cannot fire them for their misconducts. We also pay them even if we do not have

enough orders.

Other owners laughed at me when I asked: “why you are not providing an employment letter to

the workers”. One of the owners (O: 2) responded with:

“Are you joking. Look at these workers. They are Bo-Kholom (illiterate). They cannot read

and write a simple sentence Forget about following all the terms and conditions of

employment letter. It would be simply wasting papers and inks.”

Having no appointment letter automatically diminishes the legal power of workers on the

shopfloor. Additionally, none of the factories had a ‘Human Resource Department’. All the

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contracts, including working hours, job responsibilities, and wages between workers and factories

were agreed orally. This provides managers additional power and opportunities to violate the

agreements and deny workers their legal rights. All the workers revealed that they did not have

fixed working hours, therefore, they were forced to work more than their agreed hours. They were

also forced to perform other activities than those they were initially agreed. More importantly,

many workers did not receive their rightful wages. One of the workers (MW: 9) said:

During the job interview, I agreed to work with BDT. 6,560 ($77) per month. But after

working a month, I received BDT. 5,650 ($66). When I asked the line manager about this,

he said: “You must be mistaken. Your wage was 5,650, not 6,560”. If I had an appointment

letter, then things would have been different.

No formal employment contract further oppresses the workers in garment factories, as they were

frequently terminated from their jobs without providing any explanation or due payment. The

Executive Director of a local NGO (N: 1) confirmed that they (NGOs and trade unions) have

raised this issue in different meetings with the Department of Labor and the Ministry of Labor,

but nothing has been done to ensure the legal rights of workers. As with the owners, officers of

government organizations also justified that workers are not educated enough to have an

appointment letter, she added. The journalist (J: 1) and an academic researcher (AR: 2) also

explained that not providing a formal employment letter across the garment industry is a deliberate

but calculated act by Bangladeshi suppliers to ensure that workers remain powerless and disposable

in the global supply chain.

Exploitation: Ultimate rationale of building fashion empire

Exploitation enacts a structural relation between social groups (e.g., wage labor and capitalist

employers), which produces and reproduces power dynamics and inequality through a continuous

systematic process. Such systematic exploitation cannot be eliminated through redistribution of

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justice if structural relations and institutionalized practices such as accounting remain unaltered.

The role of accounting practices in exploiting workers both in capitalist and traditional societies

has flourished as a topic in the accounting literature. However, I found few innovative accounting

practices which owners of clothing factories developed further to intensify the exploitation. As

with the absence of formal employment contracts, factories did not have formal production targets

for shopfloor workers. The line supervisors determined the daily production targets of workers,

which varied, often several times a day. One of the workers (MW: 7) explained:

Our daily production targets increase with a blink of an eye. Last week, it increased three

times in a single day. First, MD (Managing Director) sir came and increased the targets.

Then PM (Production Manager) sir further increased our targets. When the shift was about

to finish, the line supervisors said that “take a fifteen-minute break. Call your home and

tell that you would be late. You are going to work another three hours as we have to

produce more units”. Because shipment date is just changed.

Many workers revealed that they were working with an old machine, which was hard to operate.

The unhealthy working conditions in many factories further made them exhausted to achieve the

budgetary targets. During the factory observations, I found that shopfloors were hot and humid.

The inside temperatures were around 38-degree Celsius, whereas outside temperatures were 36-

degree Celsius. The visited shopfloors did not have proper air circulation. Workers were sweating

heavily. The shopfloors were very noisy with the sounds of machines and electric fans. In one of

the shopfloors, I saw that workers ran to a corner, drunk water, and then ran back to their

machines. They were not allowed to keep a water bottle as this might damage the fabrics they were

working on. Drinking lots of water forced them to use the toilets frequently. Again, they ran to

and from as quickly as they could. If workers were late to return, they were abused and humiliated

by the line supervisors. In another shopfloor, I heard a line supervisor shouting at a worker: “why

you are late? Whom you were fucking in the toilet”? Such harsh disciplinary regimes further

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intensified workers’ exploitation that a worker (MW: 3) described a ‘hostage situation’. He

described:

When we enter to the factory, we do not know what will happen. We always fear whether

we will leave the factory alive or not. Whether we can see our family again or die like Rana

Plaza’s workers. Things are so dreadful that sometimes we feel like we are the hostage and

they [managers] are abductors. Everything depends on their mercy.

Having said this, if workers failed to deliver the given targets, they faced multifaced oppression

including verbal abuse, humiliation, and wage deduction. One of the workers (FW: 6) described:

It is not possible to produce 180-200 units in an hour. So, we all failed most of the time.

Our line supervisor inhumanly scolded us for this. He [line supervisor] also forced us to

squat while holding the ears in front of other workers. At the end of the day, he deducted

our overtime payment.

One of the focus group participants (worker) also explained:

They [supervisors] purposely set a high target. They know that we would not be to deliver

the targets so that they can force us to work for more hours. Often, they locked us in the

factory. But we never receive payment for this extra hour. It would be a miracle if you find

a worker who has received the full wages ever.

Remaining workers shared similar stories that they were abused, humiliated, and never received

rightful wages. Secondary documents also revealed that workers in almost all of the factories

complained that managers did not pay wages or benefits in full or on time (Human Rights Watch,

2015). To understand the wage theft, I dug deeper and found that employers deliberately avoid

formal budgeting for shopfloor workers. Although, they prepared formal budget against per sales

order but production targets for shopfloor workers were always informal. The owners rationalized

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that if they had a formal target, then workers might not work for more hours. This could prevent

a factory from accepting multiple orders at a time which would be a financial loss. In contrast,

workers and members of civil society believed that formal budgetary targets would stop the

inhuman practice like forced labor. It would also prevent wage theft. The Executive Director of a

local NGO (N: 1) stated that:

Everyone knows that Bangladeshi workers work 12-14 hours a day, sometimes seven days

a week. But workers received wages for 8-10 hours. Where is the payment for remaining

hours gone? Employers steal it. Plain and simple.

Wage theft is one of the most exploitative practices in the global supply chain, mainly in developed

countries like USA and Australia and labelled as a criminal act (Clibborn, & Wright, 2018; Tapia,

Lee, & Filipovitch, 2017). Unfortunately, existing accounting literature fails to address wage theft

as an exploitative and corrupt act. This study found that wage theft is dominant and legitimate

accounting practice in the clothing factories of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Labor Act 2006

(amended in 2013) states that all employers must keep a ‘service book’ and provide a ‘duplicate

copy’ to each worker. All workers must carry the duplicate copy at work, and line supervisors must

record daily times in and out, units produced, overtime, wage deductions, and other relevant

information both in the original and duplicate copies. Workers are also required to present their

copies when they collect their wages. On the contrary, it was found that line supervisors did not

record the actual working hours, units produced, overtime, and other information in a worker’s

copy. One of the workers (MW: 2) explained:

I worked 16 hours a day, 6 days a week for last several months. But every day, the line

supervisor wrote 10 hours in my record book. When I asked him why he was not recording

the actual data in my copy. He answered, “you are not supposed to work more than 10

hours a day. If anyone knows that we both would be in trouble. That’s why we do not

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record more than 10 hours in the book. But you do not worry. You will receive your

payment correctly”. It was all lie as I have never received my rightful wages ever.

The owners and managers, however, denied the practices of wage theft, but rationalized the

deduction of wages and overtime. A few of the owners explained that in every modern

organization workers or employees have been punished or rewarded based on their performance.

Clothing factories are no different and follow similarly accepted and legitimate accounting

practices. Their claims were untrue as one of the owners (O: 5) confirmed in a recorded interview

that most of the clothing factories in Bangladesh steal wages by fabricating data in the service

book. He explained:

We do alter our records. So, does everyone else. It is an open secret. Others would deny

it, but it is a normal practice across the garment industry.

The managers also rationalized the practice of wage theft that workers promised to produce certain

quantities per hour when they joined. But when they failed to produce the units they promised,

they had to work extra hours to complete their tasks. All the managers believed that workers

should not receive any payments for these extra hours. One of the managers (M: 3) justified this

practice:

Look, when a worker promised that she can produce 180 units an hour but failed to do

so, then she must work extra hours to deliver her promises. We must not pay her for these

extra hours. She failed, so she must redeem herself.

Such exploitation was normalized in clothing factories through the deliberate absence of

accounting and accountability (Catasu ́s, 2008; Choudhury, 1988). First, it was difficult to know

the job responsibilities of a worker as there were no formal employment contract. Second, none

of the factories provided pay slips to the workers, again a violation of the Bangladesh Labor Act

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2006 (amended in 2013). It appeared that workers were not aware of the provisions of Labor Act

(i.e., to have a formal employment letter and pay slip). The vulnerability of workers (e.g., climate

refugee with limited or no educational qualifications) help the suppliers of supply chain to

normalize their exploitation through economic, educational (e.g., accounting and managerial

skills), and political capitals.

Marginalization: Enslaving, not empowering women

The garment industry in Bangladesh has often been praised for empowering the female gender, as

nearly 60 percent of the workforce is made up young women, aged between 18 and 36 years old

who migrated (migration continues even today) to Dhaka and its nearby areas (where 90 percent

of factories are located) to escape from the devastating effects of climate change including

cyclones, floods, droughts, and erosion (Alston, 2015). Once migrants arrive, they have few jobs

available including working in clothing factories, working as domestic servitudes for private

households, or engaging in prostitution. Secondary documents have revealed that both domestic

servitudes and prostitution are extremely oppressive for women as they experience forced labor,

long working hours, mistreatment, harassment, discrimination, abuse, rape, less payment (lower

than garment factory), and other forms of violence (Heath, 2014). Considering the existing

conditions of the labor market in Bangladesh, migrate women prefer to work in clothing factories

as they have skills and knowledge relating to cloth making. Clothing factories also prefer to recruit

them, as one of the managers (M: 1) explained:

Women are good at sewing. I saw my mother, my aunts, and my sisters to sew Nakshi

Khanta [embroidered quilt] at home. My mother always fixed our clothes if it’s torn off. My

wife makes dresses for my daughter. This is why we prefer to recruit women.

However, upon inquiry, I found that recruiting young women for shopfloor operations was

deliberate and calculated. For instance, employers of clothing factories believed that women are

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more obedient, docile, and hardworking than men. In the context of Bangladesh, women migrate

and look for work only when they are desperate to escape from extreme poverty. Both desperation

and cultural compliance make migrated women ‘desired workers’ in the clothing factories of

Bangladesh. As none of the factories had an HR department, thus, managers preferred to recruit

young women, particularly unmarried, separated, or widowed. One of the participants of the focus

group (supervisor) explained their rationale:

If a woman is married and has kids, then she has more issues to deal with. She needs to

take care of her families. She will have a romantic crisis with her husband. Her kids will be

sick now and then. We do not want that. We need workers who can fully commit at work.

Who will be at work in time, work as many hours as it requires and do not need any

emergency leave!

Undeniably, the recruitment of workers in the clothing factories was driven by a need to meet the

endless demands of fast fashion. Single, divorce, or widowed young women are therefore an ideal

workforce in the clothing factories who would produce fast fashion to the high streets of Western

countries uninterruptedly. Above all, these powerless women were complaint and unaware of their

legal rights, which allows managers to oppress on the shopfloor. All the workers revealed that,

compared to male workers, female workers were abused, humiliated, punished, and sexually

harassed on the shopfloor. As one of the workers (MW: 10) described:

Supervisors scold us [male workers] with filthy languages. They also punish us by deducting

our wages and overtime. But they do not dare to humiliate us. Because they [supervisors]

know that we will protest or retaliate. But women are afraid to do so. They are in constant

fear of losing their jobs. We all are but women think losing job means end of everything.

Supervisors capitalize it very well. This is why women are more oppressed.

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Perhaps he was right, as I did not find a single male worker who was humiliated by their line

supervisors. All the twenty female workers acknowledged that fear of losing their jobs prevented

them from resisting the oppression of supervisors. A few of them stated that they had been forced

to leave their jobs on few occasions when their line supervisors had sexually harassed them. They

had complained to the mid-level and top-level management, but they were not only denied justice,

but also accused of manipulation and witchcraft. The nature of sexual harassment is dire in the

garment industry which was also documented in various reports (Human Rights Watch, 2015).

Bangladesh is a patriarchal society that promotes male hegemony and macho discourse, and as a

result, women have been accused of almost everything. In the focus group discussion, the

academic researcher (AR: 2) explained:

All men are running the factories. They have been carrying patriarchal values and male

hegemony since the day they born. Do you know that 70% women in Bangladesh are

victims of domestic violence? So, you tell me, how men owners and managers who have

more money, better education, and higher status, are going to respect these poor and

vulnerable women? If there are more women involved in factory management, then things

might improve.

Other participants were skeptical about this as one participant pointed that Bangladesh has female

Prime Minister since 1991 but again sexual harassment, rape and other form of violence against

women have become a widespread reality. Another participant mentioned that the President of

BGMEA (Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association) and Minister of Labor

and Employment are women too and they have done nothing to protect the women workers. The

Executive Director of a local NGO (N: 1) was a child laborer and endured sexual harassment in

clothing factories believed that both managers and owners in most of the clothing factories are

‘priests of male hegemony’ who are insecure about losing control over women, therefore, continue

sexual harassment. Perhaps, she was right as one of the managers (M: 2) described:

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Look, they [women workers] are poor villagers. They are here because their families were

unable to provide them with food and shelter. But sometimes, they behave like a queen. I

do not tolerate such audacity. If they disobey my instructions, I will trash them hell out.

They must not cross the boundaries. They must obey us [men] at home and work.

Indeed, women were preferred for shopfloor operations, however, they were not considered

suitable for leadership positions. All participants in this study revealed that they had never seen a

woman in a supervisory position during their careers. Again, clothing factories did not to have a

formal guideline for workers’ performance evaluation such as promotion. Instead, a worker could

be promoted to a line supervisor if he or she has a college education and a certain year of

experiences. Of the interviewed female workers, one (FW: 17) was studying for a MA at the

National University, and another (FW: 20) had completed college and enrolled for a BA program.

Despite several attempts, both were ridiculed and rejected for supervisory positions. As one of the

workers (FW: 17) explained:

I went to a neighboring factory and met the general manager. When I told him that I was

looking for a supervisory position, he laughed at me and said, “you are a woman. What’s

on earth you can be a supervisor? Be a man and contact us. We will consider then”. He

and others continuously laughed at me.

The existing accounting literature acknowledges that gender has remained one of the most visible

protective characteristics whereby women are oppressed in their economic, social, and political

life in both advanced capitalist and traditional societies (Anderson-Gough, Grey, & Robson, 2005;

Baker & Lewis, in press; Joyce & Walker, 2015). However, this study unearths something unique

that previous studies have not captured. The employers on clothing factories have recognized

these women as hardworking, committed, and less troublesome workers, who relentlessly work

and improve the profitability of factories as well as the economy of Bangladesh. The same owners

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and managers however, believed that women were unfit for supervisory positions because they are

not as strong as men. This study believes that employers of clothing factories use performance

measurement to protect their macho discourse and male hegemony by marginalizing women from

supervisory positions. Perhaps, marginalization is the most dangerous form of oppression that

excludes the entire women workforce from useful participation in leadership through material

deprivation which is normalized through stereotyped gender roles and male hegemony. As Young

(1990: 55) says, “marginalization arises when a particular social group has restricted access to

productive activities of social cooperation as well as the means of consumption”.

[INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE]

Violence: The ugly emblem of Bangladesh garment industry

The oppressive use of violence is a systematic social practice, a social given that is directed at a

member of a group simply because they are members of that group (Young, 1990). Sadly,

accounting researchers ignores to investigate the systematic, structural, and institutionalized

violence despite different accounting techniques were applied to legitimize violence during the

slavery (Rosenthal, 2018). Contemporary organizational researchers have also failed to uncover

the organizational violence (see Costas & Grey, 2019) carried out through accounting and other

organizational practices. That being said, violence is even more significant in today’s global supply

chain, considering the highly intensive labor practices used in the fast fashion industry. It appears

that often capitalist employers in global supply chains feel the need to deploy violence (Crane,

2013) because it has both practical and symbolic purposes (Krohn-Hansen, 1997). This study

found that workers were physically assaulted if they could not deliver the desired production. One

of the workers (FW: 2) described how she was assaulted when she failed to deliver these targets.

Suddenly, my line supervisor told us to produce 200 pieces per hour. It was impossible as

we struggled to produce even 170 units with this Bangla [old] machine. After an hour, he

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[line supervisor] started counting our units and found that we [nearly 50 workers] all failed.

He started beating us with a wooden scale. [she was crying while describing]

Another worker (MW: 6) explained:

A woman worker next to me failed to produce her targets. The line supervisor came and

shouted at her with foul language. She tried to explain that she was unwell that’s why could

not achieve the targets. He [line supervisor] did not care but started slapping her

continuously. We ran and stopped him.

Although, few workers and NGO officers confirmed that physical assaults were frequent before

the collapse of Rana Plaza. As the Bangladesh garment industry has remained under the spotlight

of news media, therefore, it has been eradicating. However, this study believes that violence has

never disappeared from the garment industry. It might be the case that violence has lessened for

failing to deliver targets, but certainly not when workers raise their voices for collective bargaining.

Academic research and published reports have well documented the working conditions and

human rights violation in the garment industry of Bangladesh (Alamgir & Banerjee, 2019; Human

Rights Watch, 2015; Islam et al., in press). In consistent with these, I also found that whenever

workers demanded reasonable working hours, living wages, or right to unionize, they faced various

forms of violence. Many workers shared their experiences of violence when they demonstrated

for fair wages. A few of them expressed their constant fear that factories’ managers, political goons,

and even the state law and enforcement agencies, regularly monitor their activities. They were also

unlawfully terminated from factories once they were found in organizing union. As one of the

workers (FW: 10) explained:

One day, the floor manager found a business card of an NGO in my purse [workers’

bags are regularly checked in many factories]. He took me to the office where few

other managers and local political leader were presented. Then they forced me to

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resign by signing on a white paper and kicked me out. I did not receive my wages and

bonus for that month. I was jobless for three months.

Forming a trade union is a legal right of workers in the Bangladesh garment industry. Although,

the owners of garment factories and BGMEA continuously try to restrict that right. In so doing,

they influenced the government to amend the ‘Bangladesh Labor Act 2006’ in 2013 and to add a

clause to this Act stating: “at least 30 per cent workers must be agreed before applying to register

a trade union”, this is a violation of the freedom of association standards (Human Rights Watch,

2015: 76). Factories’ owners, the BGMEA, and the government (e.g., the Minister of Commerce

and Minister of Labor & Employment) expressed strong disapproval allowing trade unions in the

garment industry documented in published reports. All the owners of this study interviewed

claimed that they have been taking very good care of workers by providing safe environment and

good wage. They also believed that workers are living a better life, therefore, no trade union is

necessary as this could destabilize the garment industry. As one of the owners (O: 4) justified:

See, when you have trade unions, then you are in serious trouble! Trade unions leaders

have huge power. They abuse their power to create an anarchy. They are always involved

in dirty politics. They also manipulate the workers to walk out from factory. They become

violent like wild animals and engage in destructive activities. So, a trade union is not good

for our garment industry.

To stop unionization, owners and BGMEA also deployed their agents (i.e., managers and political

goons) to intimidate, threat and harass the union supporters. The world media extensively reported

the murder of Aminul Islam, a trade union leader who was arrested by the state police with an

accusation of destabilizing the garment industry. He was found dead after few days nearby the

factory he worked (The New York Times, 2012). Another trade union supporter ‘Mamun’ was

found hung inside the factory he worked (The Daily Star, 2016). I interviewed one of Mamun’s

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co-workers (MW: 10) who claimed that Mamun was killed by the factory managers with the help

of a local political leader of the ruling party. He described this incident:

Around 6 p.m., a line supervisor came and escorted Mamun from the shopfloor. Mamun

never returned to the floor. Next morning, his body was found hanging on the 7th floor

of the factory. No way he hung himself. Because there were security officers who ensured

that no one stays inside the factory after the working hours. The whole factory is covered

with CCTV. So, how come the security officers did not see when Mamun was trying to

hang himself? And if they saw, then why they [security officers] did not stop him from

committing suicide. It was simply a cold-blooded murder. Mamun was killed first, then his

body was hung to eyewash us.

Whereas the state police made arrest with false accusations if workers demonstrated for their legal

rights. The workers told me that if they participated in any demonstrations, factories’ authorities

identified them through CCTV and shared their photographs with nearby police stations. The

police searched for them in their houses and in their villages to make unlawful arrests. Their

photographs were also shared with neighboring factories, ensuring that they could not find

alternative employment in this area. This is reminiscent of the ‘Fugitive Slave Act 1850’ that

restricted the movement of plantation slaves (Rosenthal, 2018). Accounting studies recognize the

marriage between capitalist organizations and the state laws that introduce many laws to protect

their economic and political interests (Bozanic, Dirsmith, & Huddart, 2012; Cho, Chen, & Roberts,

2008). In so doing, state laws turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by capitalists or exonerate

them from their crimes. As the Executive Director of an NGO (N: 1) commented:

All the existing laws and regulations violates workers’ basic rights. See, workers do not

receive their rightful wages and living wages, but labor laws do nothing. It does not protect

workers from forced labor and unlawful termination. It does not save workers from

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exploitation, sexual harassment, and physical assault. The members of law enforcement

agencies are also oppressive towards the workers, but they work to ensure owners’ benefits.

The Human Rights Watch (2015: ), also reports, “The poor and abusive working conditions in

Bangladesh’s garment factories are not simply the work of a few rogue factory owners willing to

break the law. They are the product of continuing government failures to enforce labor rights,

hold violators accountable, and ensure that affected workers have access to appropriate remedies”.

Similar concerned was raised by the journalist (J: 1) as he revealed how state laws had exonerated

the owners of garment factories because of their close affiliation with the state. He explained:

The owner Tazreen Fashion was in jail only for six months. But he is out and continuing

garment manufacturing despite being charged for manslaughter. Similarly, the five

factories’ owners operated in the Rana Plaza have never been arrested. In fact, they are not

even held accountable for mass murder. Because they are closely linked with the ruling

political party.

Seemingly, Bangladesh is a violent society where perpetrators have been safeguarded by the

government and state laws. Published documents also reveal how powerful groups in Bangladesh

carry out their oppression but remain ‘above the law’ (Human Rights Watch, 2020). For instance,

the indigenous people in Chittagong Hill Tracks, religious minority groups (i.e., Hindu and

Buddhist), women in households and workplaces, opposition parties’ leaders and followers,

journalists, and human right activists have all been oppressed through violence with the direct

participation of political parties, state laws and agencies, capitalist owners, and powerful individuals

since the independence of the country (Hassan & Nazneen, 2017).

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Accounting and culture of normalizing oppression

This study investigates how and to what extent accounting and other control organizational

controls are used to normalize oppression in the global supply chain of the fast fashion industry.

In so doing, this study documents how privileged group of employers produce and reproduce

certain accounting and management practices through their economic, social, and political power

to oppress vulnerable workers in the garment industry of Bangladesh. This study argues that formal

and informal accounting controls (i.e., deliberate absence of accounting such as budgeting, not

providing employment letter, not recording actual data on service book, performance

measurement as well as lack of accountability) have been carefully developed to normalize

oppression which are embedded with social practices, cultural norms, institutional laws, and

political discourses.

Oppression is not an isolated, exceptional, or discrete act. Instead, it is a normalized practice that

is routinized, legitimized, promoted, and sustained through managerial discourses, organizational

practices, and institutional supports which are hard to break (Martí & Fernández, 2013). In today’s

organizations, oppression is often perpetrated by the members of privileged and powerful groups

who have economic means, social status, and political power to influence state institutions and

laws to normalize across the industry. Contemporary accounting scholars argue that accounting

practices are intertwined with power, politics, and political parties to enhance the domination of

powerful groups over less powerful groups (Covaleski, Dirsmith, & Weiss, 2013). In consistence,

this study reveals how powerful groups such as Western buyers use their polarized outsourcing

business practices as well as economic, social, and institutional power to oppress Bangladeshi

suppliers to keep their price low but at the same time to provide the best quality product within

shorter lead-times. The commercial dynamics between global supply chains and outsourcing are

designed to secure vulnerable and disposable cheap labor in order to build the fashion empires

through the hegemony and deployment of disciplinary practices (Carmona & Gutierrez, 2006).

Page 33 of 46

This study finds that Western retailers have acquired more power through their coordinated

networks (e.g., International Organization of Employers) to extract surplus value by oppressing

the suppliers residing in emerging economies. Such oppression of lead-firms has no bounds, as

their immoral and unethical decisions to cancel orders from Bangladesh during COVID-19 forced

local manufactures to lay off (permanently and temporarily) millions of workers without any

payment.

This does not make local manufacturers saints, as they are more oppressive than the lead-firms

residing in Western society. This study reveals that owners hold legislative and administrative

positions which put them ‘above the law’. Such power and privilege allow them to violate the

country’s labor laws (e.g., recruit workers without providing employment letters, forcing them to

work by locking them in factories, stealing their wages, and allowing managers to abuse, humiliate,

punish, assault, and terminate without providing due wages) and remain unaccountable. Owners

who are not directly involved in state politics are also availed similar privileges and go unpunished

for violating the labor laws. Violation of state laws and regulations become routinized when many

individuals willingly engage in wrongful actions which shape the structures, ideologies, and

socialization practices across the industry (Misangy et al., 2008; Spicer, 2009). Once such unlawful

acts are widespread and appear as legal and moral within a community, then those acts become

normalized within that community (Earle et al., 2010).

Oppression is a social injustice that systematically and institutionally harms the members of a social

group both psychologically and materially, which in turn exacerbates their living standards (Cudd,

2005), through everyday practices (Young, 1990). Accounting does contribute to social injustice

because accounting systems are all about decision-making by powerful individuals within their

wider economic, social, and political arena. Therefore, the effectiveness of accounting systems

depends upon how accounting practices are influenced by social and cultural norms of powerful

individuals (Hopwood, 1974). This study reveals how accounting practices (i.e., flexible budgets,

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informal budgetary targets, stealing wages, and performance evaluation) have been designed to

oppress workers concealing through ‘organizational façade’ (Cho, Laine, Roberts, & Rodrigue,

2015) such as stimulating better performances. The owners and managers did not deny the

oppressiveness of accounting practices and labor control (e.g., forced labor as well as abuse,

humiliation, punishments, and assault if workers fail to produce the budgetary targets), but whole-

heartedly rationalized their practices. Rationalization is a mental strategy that allows employers and

people around them (i.e., managers) to justify their unacceptable, illegal, or immoral act as normal

(Ashforth & Anand, 2003). When they collectively rationalize their oppressive act as a ‘normal or

necessary evil’, this becomes embedded within organizational culture and appears as a routine

practice (Brannan, 2017). In this process, such an act becomes a shared value within the

institutional sphere and becomes normalized across the industry as a standard practice (Ashforth

et al., 2008).

Normalizing oppression is not possible in the global supply chain without institutional

arrangements. The systematic and structural oppression exerted over the slaves on the cotton fields

was established through the introduction of various laws for which planters lobbied (Rosenthal,

2018). Likewise, the cotton farmers and weavers of Bangladesh were oppressed by the British

merchants as they influenced the House of Commons to introduce various laws and regulations

to restrict the production and sales of cotton and clothes (Beckert, 2014). Of course, accounting

scholars acknowledge that capitalist organizations are connected to the government officials and

party politics which provide them with a unique opportunity to gain economic benefit, social

status, and political power by lobbying and influencing laws and trade policies (Bozanic et al., 2012;

Cho et al., 2008; Fung, Gul, & Radhakrishnan, 2015). Adding to these studies, I reveal that

suppliers of supply chain not only influencing states laws and regulations but also using members

of political parties and state agencies (i.e., the police) to carry out violence (e.g., threats, assault,

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arrests, abductions, and even killing union supporters) to oppress the collective bargaining of

workers in the garment industry of Bangladesh.

Violence carried out on trade unions supporters has recently increased because of the rise of

neoliberalism, anti-unionism, and exclusionary policies (Martí & Fernández, 2013; O’Mahoney et

al., 2018). Historical context, cultural beliefs, and social relations also encourage organizational

violence in a society (Costas & Grey, 2019). For example, if an organization is located within a

violent community, then its members may demonstrate violence towards workers (Dietz,

Robinson, Folger, Baron, & Schulz, 2003). It is not a secret that Bangladesh has remained a violent

society since independence because of clientelism and kinship in social and political organizations

(Hassan & Nazneen, 2017). Weak constitutional rights, corrupt government organizations,

absence of good governance, and lack of democracy have leading widespread corruption, violence,

abuse of human rights, and restrictions on freedom of speech with the specific directions from

the top government officials and ruling party (Human Rights Watch, 2020).

This study believes that it is a long overdue to restructure the outsourcing business by balancing

power between lead-firms and suppliers as well as suppliers and workers in the global supply chain

to eradicate normalized oppression. Perhaps, it can be started by reducing the power of lead-firms

and their association (e.g., International Organization of Employers) and make them responsible

to ensure the legal rights and wellbeing of workers who produce goods for them. Similarly, power

of employers and their association (i.e., BGMEA) in suppliers’ country must be reduced and make

them to do business ethically and responsibly. They must also be held accountable for violating

the labor laws and international labor standards. This can be begun by separating capitalist

employers from the government administration and decision-making process relating to the global

supply chain. A strong democracy and autonomous government and non-government institutions

are important to enforce the existing laws to eradicate systemic, structural, and institutional

oppression. Perhaps, this would provide autonomy to these organizations as well as trade

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arbitrators to work independently to ensure the legal rights of workers in supply chain. We need

to recognize that oppression (e.g., overt and covert) can be normalized through accounting

practices and other organizational controls in any society because of polarized social structure,

stereotyped cultural norms, corrupt political dynamics, weak institutional rules and regulations,

disregards of human rights, and democratic deficit.

Conclusion

This article investigates why and how accounting controls normalize oppression over the workers

of global supply chain. It shows that by using their economic, social, and political power and

privilege, lead firms oppress the local manufactures to produce quality product with cheaper prices

within shorter lead time. Power differences becomes wider and explicit at the bottom of supply

chain when local manufacturers purposely design their accounting and other management

practices to oppress (e.g., abuse, assault, exploit, humiliate, harass, punish, and marginalize) factory

workers to achieve their goals which are profit maximization and labor control. The deliberate

absence of accounting further intensifies the ongoing oppression. The multifaceted oppression is

however, normalized through suppliers economic, social, political, and legislative power. As they

are closely linked with the state, ruling political party, bureaucrats, army, and law and enforcement

agencies, thus, they reside ‘above the law’ and get away with their criminal acts, including, violence

and killings. This study argues that oppression is not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, or religion

in a particular society, rather it is widespread in capitalist organizations across the globe in absence

of strong democracy and good governance. Oppression is also embedded with social norms,

cultural beliefs, political systems, social structures, and institutional laws, thus, it can easily be

normalized in capitalist organizations. This article suggests that future researchers should not limit

themselves using a deterministic or single characteristic to understand the link between accounting

(as well as absence of accounting) system and oppression. Rather, they should go beyond the race,

gender, ethnicity, and other protected characteristics while investigate oppression in the context

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of business organizations and industries connecting with the global supply chain. They should also

consider how the economic, historical, social, cultural, and political norms of organizational

members influence organizational practices, trade policies, national and international laws relating

to supply chain which enable normalizing oppression. Future researchers could explore other

forms of oppression both in the private and public sectors of emerging and developing economies.

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Table 1: Details of data collection

Details of interviewees

Factory workers: 30 Female = 20; Male = 10

All of them migrated from villages. They work as a junior operator, operator, and senior operator in five compliance factories located in Dhaka, Ashulia, Gazipur, and Tongi. Female workers (FW) are between 18 and 34 years old; male workers (MW) are between 21 and 36 years old.

Managers (M): 5 All of them are male, migrated from villages and between 35 and 56 years old working in above mentioned compliance factories. Four of them started their career as workers in RMG factories. Two of them are now line supervisors and two are floor managers.

Owners (O): 5 All of them are male, university graduates and between 27 and 61 years old. They have multiple compliance factories (including the above five) in the suburbs of Dhaka which produce RMG for big retailers in Europe and America.

Members of an NGO (N): 7 Six of them are female, including the Executive Director. Four of them worked as child laborers in clothing factories. This NGO has been creating awareness among the workers of their rights and responsibilities since 2002.

Journalist (J): 1 The journalist is a male who works for a leading English newspaper. He has been reporting industrial news (including the collapse of Rana Plaza) for the last 20 years.

Academic researchers (AR): 2 One of them is an Assistant Professor from the USA. She investigates the wellbeing of garment workers in Bangladesh. The other researcher is a Professor of a local university. He studies the political dynamics and corruption in Bangladesh.

Total = 50

Focus group discussion

It was organized with 10 participation including 5 workers (3 females and 2 males), 2 supervisors, 1 academic researcher, 1 journalist of a local English newspaper, and 1 NGO councilor. It lasted for 150 minutes.

Non-participant observation

The owners (mentioned above) allowed the first author to conduct non-participant observation in their factories located in Dhaka, Ashulia, Gazipur, and Tongi. A total 40 hours (8 hours in 5 factories) of observation were conducted.

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Table 2: Summary of normalizing oppression

Sources Oppression

Interviews Focus group discussion Observations Normalization

Powerlessness § Owners claimed that they are living in constant fear as Western buyers can cancel orders and leave Bangladesh at any time. In this power inequality, they have no choice but to force the workers to produce more units with limited time and wages.

§ In this power differences, workers are truly powerless. Employers did not even provide a formal ‘employment contract’ which helped to violate workers’ basic and legal rights through ‘performance measurement’.

§ All the worker participants in this study viewed themselves as a ‘modern slave’ because factory authority did not consider them as human beings. They did not have a voice to negotiate their responsibilities, wages, hourly production targets, and performance evaluation. Managers’ decisions were final on the shopfloor and they must obey those decisions.

§ None of the factories had an HR department. Managers and line supervisors recruited workers, determined their tasks, wages, and performances.

§ None of the factories issued an employment letter to the workers.

§ Managers had polarized and stereotyped norms and beliefs (e.g., poor, illiterate, refugee) about the workers.

§ Lead-firms always pressurized local manufacturers to produce best quality products with the cheapest price. If local suppliers asked for better prices, they were threatened to leave Bangladesh.

§ Issuing an employment letter is a requirement of the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (amended in 2013).

§ Not issuing the employment letter is a common practice across the garment industry, which is a violation of labor laws.

§ None of the employers was held accountable for violating the labor laws.

Exploitation § All the worker participants confirmed that they were forced to work extra hours but received no payment for this.

§ The supervisors acknowledged that they are oppressive towards workers to achieve production targets. If they fail, then their jobs would be in danger.

§ Workers were working in a congested shopfloor with limited air circulation. It was hot and noisy, but

§ Force labor, verbal abuse, humiliation, punishment, wage deduction is normal factory culture across the garment industry of Bangladesh.

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§ They were also abused, punished, and humiliated if they failed to deliver the desired production targets. They never received their full wages as managers did not record the actual output and working hours in the workers’ copy of service book.

§ They also never received pay slips, which restricted them from knowing their actual income and wage deduction.

Therefore, they do not have an alternative option but to apply whatever techniques they can to extract surplus labor.

§ Members of civil society perceived the exploitation of workers as more like slavery conditions in the garment industry of Bangladesh.

the managers' office was air-conditioned and airtight.

§ Workers were not allowed to keep water with them as it may damage the fabric. They had their lunch on the emergency staircase or the open roof because none of the visited factory had dining space.

§ They worked under strict disciplinary regime.

§ Owners and managers rationalized these practices as necessary for their survival. They also blamed workers for such practices because workers are illiterate and inefficient.

§ State agencies including the Ministry of Labor & Employment and the Department of Labor were aware of ongoing exploitation but did nothing to protect the workers’ legal rights.

Marginalization § Women workers said that they were excluded from supervisory positions. Two of them said that they were rejected from supervisory positions several times despite having experience and qualifications.

§ Owners and managers said that female workers are physically and mentally weak for

§ Worker participants believed that if there were women in a supervisory position, then abuse, humiliation and harassment would be far lower than they are now.

§ Academic researchers and NGO officials believed that marginalizing women is a careful and calculated

§ Women were preferred for shopfloor operation, but not a single woman was found in a supervisory or managerial role in any factory.

§ All the owners, managers, and supervisors were

§ None of the factories had a formal policy of performance evaluation. Written performance measurement techniques were purposely avoided across the garment industry in order to marginalize women through patriarchy and male hegemony.

§ There is no law relating to workplace violence and sexual harassment in Bangladesh.

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supervisory positions because they would not be able to deliver the target budgets. They also believe that women cannot control the shopfloor workers.

act to oppress women because Bangladesh is a high-power distance patriarchal society. They also believed that men are insecure because if women participate in decision-making, then male hegemony would be in crisis.

male in the clothing factories.

§ Women workers were humiliated, sexually harassed, and often physically assaulted on the shopfloor whereas none of the male workers had experienced such oppression.

§ Bangladesh is a patriarchal society where most of the men believe in stereotyped gender roles. Men control the economic, social, and political life of women in Bangladesh.

§ In Bangladesh, more than 70 percent women are victims of domestic violence.

Violence § Many workers said that they were beaten by the managers, members of the political party, and police for demonstrating for their legal rights, such as living wage and right to form unions.

§ Owners were totally against the formation of a trade union in the factory. To stop unionization, they always reach out to police and political party to assault and police to arrest the workers who participated in a demonstration.

§ A few of the workers also mentioned that they were

§ Participants acknowledged that violence on workers lessened (for failing to deliver the budgetary targets) after the collapse of Rana Plaza. But it was worse than ever on union supporters.

§ The members of civil society believed that owners used their economic, social, and political power to carry out the violence on workers who supported the unions.

§ Forming a trade union in the clothing factory is allowed by the Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (amended in 2013). But it was found that none of the factories allowed workers to form a trade union, which is a violation of labor laws.

§ Government and its agencies supported the non-unionization workplace in the garment industry.

§ Most of the owners are involved in ruling party politics. They influence the Ministry of Labor & Employment to amend the labor law in 2013 and restricted the right to form a union.

§ They also use the members of the ruling political party and state police to carry out the violence on union supporters.

§ The owners’ association BGMEA appears to be a highly powerful organization that dictates the laws relating to the collective bargaining of workers.

§ The current government of Bangladesh and its cabinet members strongly support non-

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physically assaulted for failing to deliver the given production targets.

§ The owner of Tazreen Fashion is out of jail and continues to cloth making and five of the owners operated in the Rana Plaza were not held accountable for mass murder.

unionization and uses forces on workers if they demand their rights.