Transnational auditors, local workplaces and the law

Abstract

Auditors of global supply chains play an influential role in determining what it means for manufacturing facilities to comply with both transnational standards as well as national and international labour laws. They exercise this role at the interface between the local context of labourers in a workplace governed by local and national laws, and the transnational context of private standards intended to govern global supply chains. This article utilises the concept of translocal legality to explore how auditors develop and deploy their authority and technical expertise to interpret questions about compliance with legal and private norms in global supply chains. It illustrates how auditors transform what it means to be compliant with legal requirements, and in doing so creates a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable types of risk to workers’ safety in the context of economic globalisation.