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Banking scandals, accounting fraud, product recalls, and environmental disasters, their associated reputational effects as well as company response strategies have been well reported in the literature. Reported crises and scandals typically involve one focal company for example BP and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident. As business practices change and company supply chains become more complex and interlinked, there is a greater risk of collective crises where multiple companies are associated with the same scandal. We argue that companies are likely to behave differently in a group setting compared to when faced with a crisis individually. Using an inductive approach, we examine the case of the Rana Plaza building collapse. We find that organizations with a history of similar crises adopt defensive strategies and communicate much later compared to organizations which adopt accommodative strategies. Contrary to the individual case, in a collective crisis accommodative strategies result in more negative reputational damage and a higher burden of responsibility. We propose that the relationship between crisis response strategy and organization reputation is moderated by the crisis setting. We extend the logic of crisis management and corporate reputation to incorporate the case of a collective crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of workplace safety in the ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh came to the forefront after a series of disastrous events in recent years. In order to reduce the loss of lives and to ensure sustainable development, an in-depth understanding of the determining factors governing structural vulnerability in the RMG industry is needed. This research explores the key factors influencing the vulnerability of factory buildings under both vertical and earthquake loads. For this purpose, an ordered probit model was applied to 3746 RMG factory buildings to determine the key factors that influenced their vertical load vulnerability. A smaller subset of the original sample, 478 buildings, was examined by the same modeling method in greater detail to assess the key factors that influenced their earthquake load vulnerability. This research reveals that column capacity, structural system, and construction materials are the most influential factors for both types of vulnerabilities. Among other factors, soil liquefaction and irregular internal frame affect earthquake load vulnerability significantly. These findings are expected to enable factory owners and designers to better weigh the appropriate vulnerability factors in order to make informed decision that increase workplace safety. The research findings will also help the designated authorities to conduct successful inspections of factory buildings and take actions that reduce vulnerability to both vertical and earthquake loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eight years before the Rana Plaza collapse (24 April 2013), which killed over 1100 people and received huge international media coverage, a somewhat similar tragedy drew my attention: the collapse of the Spectrum Sweater Industries Ltd. factory (10 April 2005), which was responsible for the death of 64 people and led to some international mobilization. This paper describes and analyses the international career of the mobilization for the victims spurred by the tragedy. How were European consumers and citizens called upon to act? How did the European brands react? In the end, the question is how the appeal to Western firms' 'Corporate Social Responsibility' (CSR) can help improve the working conditions prevailing in Southern factories. By applying a generic definition of responsibility (the controlled administration of a sanction) and minutely examining the imputations of responsibility consecutive to the Spectrum tragedy, the paper exposes the work of activists who attempted to establish Western companies' responsibility, and how some of the tagged companies resisted their moral obligation to protect workers beyond an employer-employee relationship stricto sensu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastating collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013, which cost 1,136 lives, brought Bangladesh in sudden unwanted limelight and posed an ominous question about the sustainability of its Ready-Made Garments (RMG) sector. However, as part of the rapid response in the tragic aftermath, 3,632 RMG factories have been inspected as of 2015. Among these, 1,549 factories have been inspected by the National Tripartite Plan of Action (NTPA) undertaken by the Government of Bangladesh with support from the International Labour Organization (ILO). The remaining 2,083 factories have been inspected by the two initiatives representing international brands and retailers viz. the landmark Bangladesh Accord and the Alliance for Bangladesh. This study explores the process and the number of Corrective Action Plans (CAP) and Detailed Engineering Assessments (DEA) conducted by the two international initiatives and the challenges of the remediation. It also takes a look into the Better Work Bangladesh program designed to improve working conditions and promote competitiveness in the global RMG sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the importance of a global safety and health management standard to the enhancement of worker safety in international supply chains. It mentions factory fires in Bangladesh and Pakistan and the collapse of the Rana Plaza Building, all of which resulted to worker deaths, initiatives taken by the Bangladesh government, International Labor Organization (ILO) as well as European, U.S. and Canadian garment manufacturers, and the developments resulting from the initiatives.

The article focuses on garment factory fires and other similar tragedies in East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. These tragedies affect supply chains that deliver clothing and consumer goods to thousands of retail stores in Europe and North America. The collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh in April 2013 caused the death of more than a thousand persons.

The article discusses the struggles of the informal workers in eight different countries. It cites the collapse of an eight-story building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013 that left hundreds of low-income garment workers and unveiled the plight of the unregulated and unprotected workers. It also highlights the employment data and labor productivity that mirror the condition and kind of an industrial production.

The response to the disaster of the clothing factories’ collapse in Savar, just outside Dhaka, in April 2013 with the loss of over 1,100 young lives, echoes the reaction to the greatest industrial calamity ever to have occurred in Britain. This took place in 1913, exactly one hundred years earlier – the Senghenydd pit disaster, which claimed the lives of 439 miners. Predictably, in the West in 2013, the conscience of the penitent cheaply clad took precedence over the actual lives of the producers of their apparel. The ‘humanitarian’ hand-wringing hides a deeper assumption, namely, that since ‘we’ have known such disasters on our journey towards prosperity, ‘they’ too, must expect a similar experience; built, as it is, into the nature of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss the fire accident in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh on November 24, 2012 which was the worst industrial accident in the history of the country. They state that the accident has prompted widespread calls across the world for better safety measures. The authors further highlight the need to formulate changes to improve workplace safety and health, particularly in the garment industry, as it is critical to the national economy of the country.

The article discusses the study which examines the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in response to a worker safety incident at an outsourced facility in a foreign country including the collapse of garment production facilities in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The include the identification of CSR as core business value by PricewaterhouseCoopers during the 19th Annual Global Chief Executive Officers (CEO) Survey and the North American Alliance (NAA) for Bangladesh agreement.