Introduction
Corporate Social Responsibility at Marks and Spencer has traditionally been interpreted as the provision of quality and value for money for the customers and a paternalistic regime for the large labour force of shop assistants. As 90 per cent of these were women cared for by women supervisors, perhaps ‘maternalistic’ would be a better word. However, a more important and original dimension of chain stores’ strategy has been the paternalism exhibited in relations with a large body of supplier firms, first in the clothing industry and more recently in food supply. This policy, which was pursued for 70 years or more, and has only collapsed very recently, forms the main focus of this paper. The employee and supplier policies were not wholly separate operations because supplier paternalism covered (among several other things) the welfare of the manufacturing labour force in numerous factories around Britain. Consequently it is best to begin with an evaluation of what......
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Approximate Word Count: 4286
Approximate Pages: 17 (260 words per double-spaced page) |