Department of Management, Society and Communication

My research investigates the economic, social, and environmental consequences of international trade between the Global North and the Global South. In particular, my research seeks to answer three questions:

• Why do global value chains arise between the Global North and the Global South?
• How do multinational companies organize this trade, particularly through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability requirements?
• What are the economic, social, and environmental implications of this trade for local firms, farmers, workers, and communities in the Global South?

With an interdisciplinary background in development studies (i.e., North-South relations), environmental management, and labor studies, I am to develop global value chain analysis as a heuristic tool for empirical analysis, in ways that incorporate insights from CSR and corporate sustainability, political ecology, and worker-driven regulation theories. I have conducted detailed empirical studies of the formulation, implementation, monitoring and impact of CSR and sustainability policies in global garment, textile, leather, and bamboo value chains linking Europe and South Asia for more than 20 years. This research involves an epistemic commitment to giving voice to marginalized and suppressed stakeholders in South Asia, whose views and concerns are often ignored or sidelined in CSR and sustainability research, policy, and practice in Europe and North America.
 
This work has been been published in top-tier journals such as Work, Employment and Society, Environment and Planning A, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Business Ethics, Development and Change, Ecological Economics, and Global Networks. Additionally, I have authored and edited five books in the last five years, including my recent monograph, Rethinking Global Value Chains and CSR (Edward Elgar, 2022), and coauthored titles, Sustainable Garment Value Chains (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and two forthcoming books, Global Value Chains and Climate Change (Edward Elgar, 2025) and Nation-branding, Global Value Chains, and Sustainability (Cambridge University Press, 2025).