Private regulation of labor standar

Private regulation of labor standards in global supply chains has been increasingly adopted in diverse industries since the 1990s. However, schol-arly evidence suggests that the private regulation model has not generated sustainable improvements in working conditions in the global supply chain, evidenced by a continuing gap between the practices adopted and the expected outcomes. Violations of labor standards continue to be quite com-mon. One explanation for the lack of sustained improvement rests on the idea that organizations ‘‘symbolically adopt’’ private regulation practices, while other explanations point to flaws in the individual elements of private regulation or organizational failures in implementation.