The Relevance of CSR in the Fashion Industry. The strategies to improve workers' rights and conditions.

Abstract

Corporate responsibility is no longer limited to generating profits that meet the expectations of firms’ shareholders. Recently, the concept of responsibility has extended, incorporating two additional dimensions, namely the social and environmental ones. Therefore, we are talking about CSR, a trend that is gradually taking on global importance. As a result, the ultimate goal of firms has become to strengthen their competitiveness on the market and, simultaneously, to improve the conditions of the community where they operate, creating connections between social and economic progress of society. The research focuses on the fashion industry, whose dynamics will be discussed once the CSR definition and the current state of the literature on the topic have been outlined. CSR is a recent issue in the garment industry that, therefore, still requires many studies and concrete actions. Moreover, given its global scale, complexity, its lack of regulation from a social point of view, and its strong impact on the ecosystem make fashion a perfect scenario for the implementation of social sustainability. In the first part, the concept of CSR and that of Fair Trade are analyzed in a general framework, keeping in mind that the latter is considered by the literature as one of the tools of social responsibility itself. Both topics are presented by means of a literature review, which is integrated with an in-depth analysis of the use of CSR as a strategic tool. In the second part, an analysis of the fashion context is carried out, with a macroeconomic and then a trend analysis of the most significant trends. Finally, an investigation of socially-oriented strategies is performed, comparing those implemented by the most important companies in the fashion scenario.