Paper short abstract:

We aim to understand how the managers linking Ethiopia’s female workers to global value chains understand these workers' wellbeing. To move from a ‘compliance culture’ to a ‘wellbeing culture’, a culturally- and historically-informed discussion that looks beyond the 'business case' is needed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to understand how the managers who link Ethiopia’s female workers to global value chains (GVCs) understand these workers' wellbeing. The country’s strategy to position itself as the new frontier of low-wage labour has sparked the rapid insertion of part of its agrarian workforce into two export industries: horticulture (particularly cut flowers) and apparel. The nature of the transformation to their circumstances that these workers have experienced is subject to debate: scholars and policymakers agree that GVCs should deliver improvements not only to countries’ macroeconomic situations but also to the lives of affected workers and communities—or ‘social upgrading’. But there is considerable disagreement on the extent to which this is feasible and occurring in practice. This is partly, we argue, because few studies have elicited the perspectives of managers at firm level, despite the crucial role that this group plays in connecting global buyers to local production. As a result, it is often assumed that these actors primarily respond mechanistically to financial (dis)incentives such as the ‘business case’ (greater profits in exchange for compliance). Our analysis of 38 qualitative interviews demonstrates that foreign and Ethiopian managers bring to their positions a number of assumptions shaped by their own countries' experiences of industrialization. This is especially true when wellbeing is conceptualised not only as immediate working conditions, but also extended relationally and temporally. To move beyond a ‘compliance culture’ to a ‘wellbeing culture’ at the bottom of precarious GVCs, a complex, culturally- and historically-informed discussion beyond the business case is needed.