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With only a few exceptions, economic sociology scholarship remains almost silent about illegality and crime in the economy. The implicit premise in the literature on market sociology is that institutional structures and exchanges taking place in markets are law abiding in nature. As a consequence of this legality bias the study of morality in markets has so far only addressed commodities – like human organs, gambling, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco – whose legal status depends on broad social agreements and has excluded markets whose workings are dependent on formally legitimized institutions like property rights, trademark laws, or copyrights. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of emerging moral justifications in the context of a marketplace for counterfeit and sweatshop-produced garments. In line with Anteby’s proposal on a “practice-based view of moral markets,” it argues that despite the broad moral consensus around trademark laws and the absence of professionals who advocate for legalization, moral justifications views arise from rising aspirations in such illegal markets. The case expands existing understandings of morality and contestation in economic sociology literature and shows its relevance in the context of recent academic scholarship on perceptions of the future as a source of moral justification of market exchanges.

Businesses have increasingly been urged to shift their emphasis away from a purely profit-driven economic perspective to a more sustainable approach to growth that holistically captures people, the planet and profits. Indigenous businesses are well suited to creatively integrate sustainability principles within their internal culture. This enables them to cope with the dominance created by non-indigenous enterprises while also promoting long-term business success. The Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept has been applied to explore how indigenous businesses in Uganda manifest their best practices by incorporating sustainability principles for lasting economic performance. A multiple case study approach was adopted, and three well-established female-owned indigenous businesses were investigated using in-depth interviews. Integrating sustainability in the business is a fulfiling process if done holistically by embracing a range of interdependent variables that include environmental, social and economic dimensions. The author contributes an innovative culturally sensitive sustainability scope that reflects practical insights on how internal sustainability efforts can be streamlined for long-term economic prosperity without compromising the wider social and physical environment.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This chapter offers an overview of the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the textile industry and in particular, the textile colouration and finishing industry. The advent of new technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things (IoT) has changed many businesses and one area AI is seeing growth in is the textile industry. It is estimated that the AI software market shall reach a new high of over US$60 billion by 2022, and the largest increase is projected to be in the area of machine learning (ML). This is the area of AI where machines process and analyse vast amount of data they collect to perform tasks and processes. In the textile manufacturing industry, AI is applied to various areas such as colour matching, colour recipe formulation, pattern recognition, garment manufacture, process optimisation, quality control and supply chain management for enhanced productivity, product quality and competitiveness, reduced environmental impact and overall improved customer experience. The importance and success of AI is set to grow as ML algorithms become more sophisticated and smarter, and computing power increases.

Between 1946 and 1962 the United States detonated 109 nuclear weapons in an area of the Pacific Ocean called the Pacific Proving Grounds, mainly at the Enewetak and Bikini Atolls in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The British nuclear testing program spanned eleven years (1952-1963) and involved detonation of 21 weapons in addition to a number of smaller-scale experiments (the “minor” trials) in South Australia. In both cases lands that were inhabited by an original people were extensively contaminated by the testing and, following its cessation, these people desired the return of their lands in a condition that would support resumption of traditional lifestyles. Cleanup and reoccupation of the contaminated lands in these two arenas raised similar questions of cultural identity and communication and the importance of cultural as well as technical understanding in establishing conditions for safe resettlement. The approaches taken to resolving these questions in the two situations have been very different—featuring extensive stakeholder involvement in a technocratic decision making process in the Maralinga case and a series of attempted negotiations and claims under the terms of trust agreements with the U.S. government in the Marshall Islands case. Similar questions regarding what constitutes a safe final condition and the means by which safety will be maintained remain in each case however. The Australian case has reached the more definitive outcome of the two. A jointly drafted comprehensive environmental management plan, if fully implemented and sustained over the time periods necessary, could facilitate a semblance of the outstation lifestyle that the aboriginal Maralingan people desire. But what has been agreed to may still prove very difficult to live with given the levels of residual contamination and the many ways that traditional cultural practices put people in intimate contact with the land.

The digital and material traceability of our interactions in organizations are nowadays the subject of very advanced analyses through tools known as social media analytics (SMA). As thinking (infrastructure), SMA tools constitute objects to think of our digitally mediated interactions with. It produces a substratum (a new meaning) that would not exist otherwise, and enacts different types of reasoning that hypothetically influence community managers’ or members’ sensemaking of digitally mediated interactions. This chapter proposes to look behind the curtain of charts and graphs, in order to highlight the performativity of the interactions between the different machines and the traces of our digitally mediated interactions. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the fabric of SMA, this chapter highlights the explanatory power of a communication perspective on types of reasoning enacted by thinking infrastructures. First, considering the SMA tool as an editorial enunciation allows us to see it as a process implying several beings (e.g. machines, humans and logs) that are not without consequences. Second, we show that these beings have different modalities of interactions with each other, and that these modalities of interactions influence the materiality of the digital traces of past interactions. Third, throughout the process, we demonstrate the fragility and variability of their materiality. Finally, faced with the rise of a technological deterministic discourse, which tends to portray the exploitation of our digital traces as an objective way of representing the collaborative practices that make up the organization, our research aims, on the contrary, to demonstrate their relativity.