The Gap Inc.’S Social Responsibility Reports

Chapter 7 The Gap Inc.’s Social Responsibility Reports 1) This chapter defined global corporate citizenship as putting an organizations commitment to social and environmental responsibility into practice worldwide. By this definition Gap has demonstrated global corporate citizenship since it has developed one of the most comprehensive factory-monitoring programs in the apparel industry in order to find and stop sweatshops, child labor and unsafe working conditions. The Gap has also pledged to thoroughly assess its global operations and has created a Code of Vendor Conduct. Using this code, Gap pledges to do business only with vendors that agree to; not discriminate in employment, support human rights, protect freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, not use child labor or forced labor and not use corrupt practices including bribery and extortion. 2) Concerning the issues in its factories I do believe that Gap has moved through all five stages of corporate citizenship as defined in this chapter. In the 1990s and early 2000s the company was in the elementary stage, complying with the law but unresponsive to the protestors. After the protests spread and activist shareholders became involved Gap moved to the engaged stage and reacted with written policies like the Code of Vendor Conduct. In the innovative stage they introduced the VCO, or vendor compliance officer program. At stage four, the integrated stage, Gap focused on “find, fix and prevent” to proactively train contractors and facilitate dialogue between managers and unions. In the transforming stage Gap has partnered with other organizations and through its Public Reporting Workgroup has increased transparency. Gap has also been the leader in the development of a reporting framework for the apparel and footwear industry. 3) The Gap’s social audit and reporting practices compare favorably with the Freeport-Moran and The Body Shop examples discussed in this chapter. All three