| Voluntary labor codes and certifications have been adopted and used by manufacturers across multiple industries for the past two decades or more, as means of ensuring minimally acceptable or core labor standards for workers. However, far too little is known of the potential benefits and consequences from the adoption and use of labor codes to the manufacturer, and prior human resource management (HRM) research has been virtually silent on their role in today's high performance work organizations. The first part of this dissertation research draws on previous work across multiple disciplines to examine the influence of voluntary labor code adoption on various establishment-level outcomes, including labor standards and working conditions, worker outcomes, operational performance, and financial performance. The second part of this dissertation represents a first examination of the link between the use of labor codes and the use of high performance work systems (HPWS) as it relates to establishment-level financial performance. I test my hypotheses using longitudinal data on a sample of apparel manufacturing plants in Sri Lanka. My findings demonstrate that voluntary labor code adoption may constitute an effective human resource strategy in the context of emerging economies. |
