Brokering Political Corporate Social Responsibility: Production Network Intervention Programmes in Post-Reform Myanmar's Garment Industry

Abstract

Political corporate social responsibility (CSR) research focuses on how companies leverage their CSR efforts to improve public goods provision in countries where public governance is lacking. Previous studies, due to their limited analytical scope, have not thoroughly examined the dynamic nature of these governance gaps. Another missing puzzle is how certain actors in these countries, through their regular operations, independently facilitate political CSR opportunities—such as production network intervention (PNI) programmes. Positioning PNI programmes as brokers of political CSR, we investigate four such programmes in the Myanmar's garment industry during the early years of the country's reform. We conduct neo-Gramscian analysis to examine how these programmes attempted to establish cultural and ideological leadership over CSR discourse and practice in the industry. We analyse the manufacturers’ responses to this contestation, which evolved with the introduction of a minimum wage, and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this study.