Editor’s
note: Shamistha Selvaratnam is a LLM Candidate of the Advanced Masters of
European and International Human Rights Law at Leiden University in the
Netherlands. Prior to commencing the LLM, she worked as a business and human
rights solicitor in Australia where she specialised in promoting business
respect for human rights through engagement with policy, law and practice.
The tragic collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh
in 2013, which killed over one thousand workers and injured more than two
thousand, brought global attention to the potential human rights risks and
impacts that are inherent to the garment and footwear sector.[1] This sector
employs millions of workers within its supply chain in order to enable
large-scale production of goods as quickly as possible at the lowest cost as
market trends and consumer preferences change.[2]
These workers are often present in countries where the respect for human rights
and labour rights is weak. This creates an environment that is conducive to
human rights abuses. Key risks in this sector include child labour, sexual
harassment and gender-based violence, forced labour, non-compliance with
minimum wage laws and excessive work hours.[3]
Accordingly, brands such as Adidas face the challenge of conducting effective human
rights due diligence (HRDD), particularly in their supply chains.
This third blog of a series of articles
dedicated to HRDD is a case study looking at how HRDD has materialised in
practice within Adidas’ supply chains.
It will be followed by another case study examining the steps taken by Unilever
in order to operationalise the concept of HRDD. To wrap up the series, a final piece
will reflect on the effectiveness of the turn to HRDD to strengthen respect of
human rights by businesses.
Company Background
Adidas Group (Adidas) is an apparel,
footwear and sporting goods company that is headquartered in Germany. As a
business it designs, markets and sells consumer goods globally. Adidas has
more than 2,300 retail stores, 14,000 franchise stores and 150,000 wholesale distributors,
as well as an online store.[4]
It employs more than 57,000 people and produces over 900 million products
globally.[5]
Given that it outsources most of its
production, it has a complex and large scale supply chain, with approximately
700 independent factories that manufacture products in over 50 countries.[6]
Its supplier factories by region as at
2016 are depicted in the image below. Its top sourcing countries are China,
Vietnam and Indonesia.[7]
Source: Adidas
Sustainability Progress Report 2016, p 61.
Adidas has both direct
suppliers and indirect suppliers (i.e. material and other service providers
that supply goods and services to Adidas’ direct suppliers; licensees which
manage the design, production and distribution of specific products to Adidas;
and agents that act as intermediaries and determine where products are
manufactured, manage the manufacturing process and sell finished products to
the group). Approximately 75% of its total sourcing volume comes directly from
its supply chain, with the other 25% coming from agents or made under licence. The manufactured products are sold in over 100 markets.[8]
Adidas states
that it supports the UNGPs and it is a ‘long time adherent’ to the OECD
Guidelines. It considers
that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights is a ‘global standard
of expected conduct for all business enterprises’ and it states
that it has ‘incorporated key elements of the [UNGPs] into its general practice
in managing the human rights impacts of its business.’
Adidas’ general
approach to human rights is firstly to strive ‘to operate responsibly and
in a sustainable way along the entire value chain’, and secondly to safeguard
the rights of its employees and those that work in its manufacturing supply
chains. HRDD is a key part of this approach. Given the extensive nature of
Adidas’ supply chains, it has taken a targeted approach to HRDD by focusing on
mitigating and remediating issues that arise in high-risk locations, processes
and activities.[9]
It also imposes ‘cascading responsibilities’ on its business partners in order
to ‘capture and address potential and actual human rights issues upstream and
downstream’.[10]
Adidas’ Social and Environmental Affairs team
(SEA Team) is tasked
with, inter alia, ensuring compliance with the Workplace
Standards within Adidas’ supply chains (discussed in further detail below).
The Team consists of approximately 70 individuals, including engineers,
lawyers, HR managers and former members of NGOs. It is organised into three
regional teams covering Asia, the Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The Team collaborates with other functions within Adidas, including Legal and
Human Resources. The Team works collaboratively with other functions, including
Legal, Sourcing and Human Resources. It engages directly with suppliers,
governments and other external stakeholders as and when required.
Identification and Assessment of Risks
Adidas engages in a range of processes to
identify and assess its human rights risks and impacts on a continuous basis
within its supply chains. Adidas’ SEA Team engages commissioned third party
experts and independent audits as part of this process where necessary.[11]
Adidas completes annual
Country Risk Assessments (CRAs), which are not publically available, in the
countries in which it sources products whereby it reviews the salient human
rights issues and risks in a particular country. CRAs are informed by various
people, including Adidas’ field teams, its engagement with local stakeholders,
concerns raised by international NGOs, as well as an examination of regional
human rights reports (as necessary). The risks identified in these CRAs
inform its priorities and guides its prevention and mitigation strategies,
particularly in relation to its supply chain monitoring.
Entry
into new countries
Where Adidas plans to enter a new sourcing country, in-depth
assessments are normally undertaken over a period of one to two years. The
process involves engagement with government departments, international agencies
and civil society groups to determine country level risks and issues. This
process informs whether Adidas should or should not enter a particular country,
as well as whether additional processes should be undertaken to safeguard
against particular adverse human rights impacts that are common within a
country arising within Adidas’ supply chains.
Engaging with new
suppliers
All new supplier relationships must be disclosed to Adidas’ SEA
Team for approval.
The process followed by Adidas when considering entering into
direct supplier relationships is illustrated below.
Adidas conducts an initial assessment, which consists of a
document check whereby prospective suppliers are assessed against the Workplace Standards
(discussed below) and may include a factory visit. As stated in Adidas’ Enforcement Guidelines,
Adidas checks prospective suppliers against a set of zero tolerance issues
(e.g. prison labour, repetitive and systematic abuse, life-threatening health
and safety conditions)[12]
and threshold issues (e.g. fraud and exploitation issues, serious labour
issues).[13] Zero
tolerance issues are severe breaches that ‘may threaten the lives or well-being
of workers, suppress fundamental rights, or result in irreparable damage to the
environment’, whereas threshold issues are ‘those types of breaches or
workplace issues which are considered to be extremely serious in nature,
requiring enforcement action to be taken against existing suppliers.’[14]
Where a zero tolerance issue exists, Adidas will reject a
relationship with that particular prospective supplier, whereas where a
threshold issue exists, if the issue can be fixed, a prospective supplier will
be given a timeline to rectify the issues. If they are found to have improved
after a subsequent check, they will be approved.[15] In 2018, Adidas conducted initial assessments of
221 factories. As a result, approximately 25% were rejected directly after the
initial assessment due to the presence of zero tolerance issues or after a
second visit due to the presence of threshold issues that they failed to
rectify between the initial and subsequent visits.[16]
With respect to Adidas’
indirect supply chain, external audit firms are commissioned to carry out
initial assessments. Adidas provides detailed guidance to these external
monitors so that assessments are carried out in a consistent manner. Where
these assessments identify the need for remediation processes, the SEA team
oversees them.[17]
Once a supplier, agent,
licensee or subcontract has been approved, they enter into a formal legal
agreement (e.g. manufacturing agreement). Adidas’ Workplace
Standards are an integral part of such agreements
– parties are contractually bound to uphold the Workplace Standards and act in
a manner that safeguards human rights, workers’ employment rights, safety and
the environment. They are also required to assist in identifying issues as and
when they arise.[18]
Suppliers are encouraged to share the Workplace Standards with their
subordinate relationships, including external service providers. Additionally,
Adidas incorporates human rights-related clauses into its direct supplier
contracts, as well as clauses relating to labour, workplace health and safety
and the environment.
Engaging with existing suppliers
Once direct suppliers have
been approved and have entered into a contractual relationship with Adidas,
Adidas monitors their compliance through auditing, factory visits, worker
feedback mechanisms, partnerships with external organisations (such as ILO
Better Work, the Bangladesh Accord and the Fair Labor Association) and
stakeholder outreach, including engagement with government regulators, unions,
employer federations, workers and civil society groups at the country level.
This process enables Adidas to monitor its supply chain risk to ensure that its
suppliers manufacture in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.[19]
The CRAs that Adidas
conducts results in the categorisation of countries as either high or low risk,
factories located in high-risk countries are more likely to be audited regularly
(the full list of countries by category is not publicly available). Factories
located in low-risk countries are excluded from Adidas’ audit coverage.[20] Factories are assessed based
on their commitment to and performance against the Workplace
Standards. During 2018, Adidas conducted 546
factory visits in order to engage to ‘improve working conditions and … empower
workers’[21],
and 1,207 social compliance audits and environment assessments. Additionally,
for suppliers that were considered to be ‘compliance mature’ 102
self-governance audits and collaboration audits were conducted, which were
reviewed by Adidas.
Where non-compliances
are identified, if the relevant issue is a zero tolerance issue a warning and
potential disqualification of a supplier will be triggered. If the relevant
issue is a threshold issue, Adidas will see whether the issue can be addressed
in a specified timeframe through remedial action. It may also take enforcement
action against the supplier, which includes the termination of the
relationship, stop-work notices, third party investigations and warning
letters. In 2018, Adidas issued a total of 39
warning letters across 16 countries, and terminated agreements with
one supplier on the basis that it refused to grant the SEA team
access to audit the factory.[22]
The top 10 labour and health and safety non-compliance findings
during the 2018 audits are depicted in the image below.
Source: Adidas Annual
Report 2018, p 99.
External monitors that have been approved by Adidas audit indirect supply chain
factories that work with Adidas’ licensees and agents. Audits are conducted at
least once a year, but will be conducted more frequently when additional follow
up assessments are required to monitor remedial action.
Adidas has also
implemented a Crisis Protocol so that business entities and factories can
report on high-risk issues, which in turn inform Adidas’ site visits, audits
and engagement with the business entities and factories.[23]
Stakeholder Engagement Channels
Adidas’ Stakeholder
Relations Guidelines define its stakeholders as ‘those
people or organizations who affect, or are affected by, [its] operations and
activities.’ Its stakeholders include employees, shareholders and investors,
authorisers (e.g. governments and trade associations), business partners (e.g.
unions and suppliers), workers in supplier factories, customers and
opinion-formers (e.g. journalists and special interest groups). Adidas claims
to utilise stakeholder engagement in order to identify human rights risks and
impacts through its supply chains. In order to obtain the views of these
different stakeholders, frequent forms of engagement utilised by Adidas include
stakeholder consultation meetings with workers, NGOs and suppliers, meetings
with investors and Socially Responsible Investment analysts, employee
engagement surveys and programmes, responding to inquiries from consumers and
the media and participating in multi-stakeholders initiatives (e.g. the Better
Cotton Initiative). Adidas aims to ensure that its engagement is balanced and
inclusive.
Adidas captures and
addresses complaints from third parties through its third
party grievance mechanism. The mechanism allows third parties directly
affected by an issue, including workers within its supply chains, to raise
complaints. Complaints may be raised in relation to violations of Adidas’ Workplace
Standards, or any potential, or actual, breach of
human rights linked to Adidas’ operations, products or services. As part of
this, Adidas also has an SMS hotline in the countries in which it sources its
products so that workers can voice their concerns in an easy manner. From 2014
to 2018, Adidas has received a total of 52
complaints relating to labour and human right
concerns by third parties. Third parties may also lodge complaints through the Third
Party Complaint Process of the Fair Labor Association and the OECD National
Contact Point for Germany.
Additionally, Adidas’
SEA Team regularly meets and interviews supply chain workers and tracks
feedback from independent worker hotlines and from its suppliers’ own internal
complaint systems.
Identified risks
Through the processes
set out above Adidas has identified various human rights risks in its supply
chains. Salient human rights risks include: freedom of association and
collective bargaining, working hours, health and safety, fair wages, child
labor, forced labor, resource consumption, water (including chemical
management), access to grievance mechanisms, diversity, mega sporting events,
procurement, product safety, as well as data protection and privacy security.
Other risks identified include right of assembly, freedom of
expression, migrant workers, human trafficking, discrimination, Indigenous
peoples’ rights, occupational health and safety and environmental pollution.[24]
A number of these risks are common to the garment and footwear industry as
noted by the OECD
Guideline on Responsible Supply Chains in the Garment and Footwear Industry.
Integrating and Acting
Adidas feeds the findings from the identification and assessment
processes set out above into its active programmes and they drive prevention
and mitigation measures.
The SEA Team reports
risks identified in Adidas’ supply chains to executive management on a monthly
basis.[25] Reporting highlights the
critical issues, investigations and remedial efforts taken with respect to
Adidas’ direct and indirect supply chains. This is the ‘primary vehicle
through which human rights concerns are shared with senior management and
reported progress is tracked’.
Where adverse human rights impacts occur, Adidas seeks to
remediate those cases. Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) are put in place, which
set out the remedial action, the responsible party and a timeframe to complete
that action. The supplier’s specific proposals in the CAP are then tracked and
the appropriate documentation, or remedial action(s), reviewed to close-out the
non-compliances. CAPs are normally developed through engagement with the
suppliers, to define expectations and negotiate appropriate timelines.[26] The SEA Team closely monitors the development and implementation of CAPs through
follow-up audits and record progress and verification status.
In the past, Adidas has examined and remediated instances of ‘forced
labour, child labour, freedom of association, right of assembly, freedom of
expression, discrimination, indigenous people’s rights, occupational
health and safety, resource consumption and environmental pollution’.[27]
It has also dealt with specific cases where workers have been subject to
arbitrary arrest and detention and reached out to judicial authorities where
human rights defenders have also faced arrest and detention for supporting
worker’s rights. It has petitioned governments for their failures in
enforcement, particularly in relation to the right to form and join trade
unions and the upholding of statutory minimum wages.[28]
In order to prevent adverse human rights impacts from occurring,
Adidas binds its suppliers to its Workplace Standards. It continuously monitors
those suppliers in which it has a direct contractual relationship and assesses
their performance against the Workplace Standards. Adidas also engages in
capacity building to strengthen its suppliers’ internal governance and
management systems in order to reduce the potential for adverse human rights
impacts. With respect to its indirect supply chain, Adidas places expectations
on its primary business partners to engage and apply its Workplace Standards.
With respect to
grievances raised, in cases where Adidas has caused or directly contributed to
the violation, it will seek to prevent or mitigate the chance of the impact
occurring or recurring. If an adverse impact is occurring, Adidas will engage
actively in its remediation – this may involve site visits, audits or other
engagement with a business entity or factory.[29] Where Adidas has neither
caused nor directly contributed to a violation, it will encourage the business
entity that has caused or contributed to the impact to prevent or mitigate its
recurrence.
Tracking
Adidas monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of its response to
human rights risks and impacts.
Adidas’
Internal Audit team conducts periodic assessments to evaluate the effectiveness
of individual departments and programs, with defined timelines for corrective
actions. It reports directly to the CEO and Supervisory Board. As part of this,
it evaluates the effectiveness of Adidas’ social compliance monitoring system
and human rights due diligence processes and their alignment with policy
commitments.
Adidas’
social compliance program is subject to annual third party audits and public
disclosure of tracking charts by the Fair Labor Association (available here), to determine
whether supplier-level remediation is being effectively managed by Adidas. The
Fair Labor Association also undertakes a periodic accreditation process whereby
it evaluates all elements of Adidas’ labour and human rights work.[30]
For its direct supply
chain, Adidas utilises social and environmental KPIs to assess the
effectiveness of its suppliers’ systems to protect labour rights, worker safety
and the environment. For its licensee partners and agents that manage its
indirect supply chain, Adidas uses a scorecard that evaluates and scores a
business entities performance in applying its Workplace Standards and
associated guidelines. KPIs and scorecards assist Adidas to determine strategic
suppliers and influence sourcing decisions. However, it is unclear as to how
KPIs and scorecards influence such decisions and the extent to which they do
so. Further, both factories and business entities and licensees are required to
prepare strategic compliance plans on a regular basis outlining their
strategies to meet Adidas’ Workplace Standards. Adidas’ SEA team uses these
plans to monitor the commitment and compliance practices of its direct and
indirect supply chains.[31]
Communicating
Adidas claims to have regular contact with
a diverse range of stakeholders, including vulnerable groups, workers in supply
chains, local and international NGOs, labour rights
advocacy groups, human rights advocacy groups, trade unions, investors,
national and international government agencies, and academics. The stakeholders
that Adidas engages with depend on the specific issues and trends at the time.
It uses its network to pinpoint areas for dialogue and the applicable parties
to engage with. It then prioritises stakeholders depending on action radius,
relevance, risk, willingness and capacity to engage. The frequency of dialogue
can range from monthly to quarterly or annually.
Adidas utilises various channels to
communicate its human rights impacts, policies and approaches, including:
- annual Sustainability Progress Report;
- annual Modern Slavery Statements;
- individual stakeholder meetings and
correspondence;
- structured stakeholder dialogues;
- public statements;
- collaborative engagements with NGOs;
- multi-stakeholder and partner organizations; and
- one-on-one worker interviews and meetings.
It also uses FAQs and blogs, as an accessible and understandable
way for the public and its internal staff, to grasp its human rights work and
specific programme initiatives related to worker rights, safety and the
environment.[32]
Other vehicles for stakeholder engagement include purpose-built fora such as
the OECD Advisory Panel for
embedding of Business & Human Rights Due Diligence practices into the
Apparel and Footwear sector, the Bali Process Business and Government Forum and
the Bangladesh Accord.[33]
Adidas seeks to define and tailor the appropriate level of
communications needed for a given target audience. For example, with respect to
trade unions, it is Adidas standard protocol that its local monitoring staff
engage with the factory-level trade union officials or relevant worker
representatives to cross check issues that arise during its compliance audits
and discuss the necessary remedial actions that the supplier has to follow-up
on.
To ensure clear and effective communications with local stakeholders,
affected communities and other vulnerable groups, the SEA Team has embedded
local staff in Adidas’ key sourcing countries. The team operates in 18
languages, but employs translators where needed for special investigations,
stakeholder outreach or communicating outcomes or mechanisms to improve human
rights impacts. For example, Adidas has contracted Arabic translators in Turkey
to support its communications with Syrian refugees at risk of exploitation in
the supply chain. With respect to complaints, phone calls and direct
face-to-face meetings will be used to capture issues and provide feedback. Adidas
publishes high-level information regarding the status and resolution of
complaints through its third party grievance mechanism on its website (see, for
example, a summary of the third party complaints handled by Adidas in 2018 here).
The Gaps Between Paper and Practice
As stated at the outset, brands within the
apparel and footwear sector face a plethora of challenges in conducting
effective HRDD given the human rights risks inherent in their supply chains.
Adidas itself has acknowledged
that effective HRDD remains a ‘primary challenge’ of the business, given the
‘breadth and depth of [its] business, which includes tens of thousands of
business relationships along a value chain that stretches from smallholders,
farming cotton, to the final point of sale in a retail store.’ Nonetheless,
Adidas is considered to have leading HRDD practices globally, not only in the
apparel sector, but also across the sectors that have been benchmarked to date.[34]
What is clear from a review of Adidas’ human
rights approach is that it recognises its responsibility to respect human
rights and has sought to take steps to fulfil this obligation along its entire
value chain. As part of that, it has developed over a period of over 20 years
extensive HRDD practices fleshing out its commitment to upholding human rights.[35]
Adidas’ HRDD practices seek to properly identify and assess the human rights
risks and impacts that arise in its supply chains, and prevent and mitigate
those risks through engagement with suppliers and stakeholders.
Despite this strong commitment and
extensive HRDD processes and procedures in its supply chains, Adidas’ human
rights track record is not perfect. Over recent years Adidas has featured in
headlines where it has been demonstrated that human rights issues exist in its
supply chains. Many of these issues relate to the wages paid to its supply
chain workers. In 2014, the Clean Clothes
Campaign (CCC) released a profile
on Adidas with respect to its practices regarding workers’ living wages. The
profile noted that while Adidas was assessing its wages practices across Asia,
‘it [was] still not willing to define what a living wage means in its business’
and had passed on responsibility for wages in supplier factories to factory
owners. The CCC called on Adidas to ‘engage in identifying a living-wage figure
and changing pricing in order to enable its payment.’ This call to action came
after workers in factories that supply to Adidas went on strike in Asia.
In 2014, there was a nationwide
strike in Cambodia calling for an increase of the minimum wage for garment
workers. Shortly before the strike the CCC reported that the minimum wage in
Cambodia at the time did not allow workers to meet their living costs in
housing, food, clothing, education, transport and healthcare. During a
crackdown in Cambodia, five workers were shot dead and 30 others were injured.
Following this event, Adidas backed
the development of a minimum wage review mechanism for garment workers.
Also in 2014, workers at the Yue Yuen shoe factory in China, an Adidas supplier,
went on strike
over social security payments and housing fund contributions. In response, Adidas
moved some of its orders from the factory in order to ‘minimize the impact on
[its] operations’. It did not sever ties with the factory given that ‘China is,
and will continue to be, a strategic sourcing country for [it].’ Again in 2015
workers from the same factory went on strike
due to changes in its production process, resulting in workers demanding an
immediate payout of their housing fund. No information on Adidas’ response to
this issue has been located, however, Reuters reported
that Adidas did not immediately respond to its request for comment.
The payment of low wages to workers was
more recently raised in June last year where Adidas was accused of ‘foul play’ by paying thousands of female
workers within its supply chain low wages in order to prepare football shirts
and shoes for the Football World Cup that year. In their report,
Éthique sur l’étiquette and the CCC
compared the costs of Adidas’ current production with that in the 1990s and
found that the costs paid to workers had decreased by 30%. Noting that a large
proportion of Adidas production occurs in Indonesia, it found that the wages
paid to female workers was not sufficient to cover their basic needs, with some
women not even receiving the minimum legal wage. The report stated that:
If … Adidas had
paid the same amount of dividends in 2017 as they did in 2012, or maintained
the level of marketing/sponsorship spending, the resulting proceeds would have
allowed for living wages to be paid throughout their entire supply chain in
China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Outside Asia, concerns were also raised in
2016 in relation to the treatment
and serious exploitation of Syrian refugees in Turkish supplier factories,
including sexual abuse and child labour. As a result, Adidas was called upon by
the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre to respond to these concerns by
completing a questionnaire, Adidas’ response
to the questionnaire outlined its policies and procedures with respect to
employing Syrian refugees and their treatment in supply chains, noting that it
does not have any Syrian refugees working for any of its five Turkish first
tier Turkish suppliers.
Similarly concerns were also raised in 2016
and 2017 in relation to the poor working conditions in shoe supply chains in
Eastern Europe (see for example the CCC’s reports titled ‘Labour
on a Shoe String’ and ‘Europe’s
Sweatshops: The results of CCC’s Most Recent Researches in Central, East and
South East Europe’). Adidas was again called upon by the Business and Human
Rights Resource Centre to respond to a series of questions regarding its
efforts and work in the area of sustainability and social responsibility,
precisely on sourcing policies with regard to Eastern Europe. In its 2016
response, Adidas defended its engagement with leather tanneries stating
that it has ‘a well-tested human rights due diligence process, one which
considers the severity of country and industry-level risks within our global
supply chain.’ However, it also noted that the sourcing of raw hides and
finished leather has been identified as a ‘priority area for further assessment
and [its] deeper involvement’. With respect to its footwear manufacturing in
Eastern Europe, Adidas stated that ‘more should be done to improve wages’ and
‘engagement between local suppliers, unions, governments, and buyers’ is
critical to improving the lives of workers. It did not, however, outline what
actions it would take to improve worker wages. In its 2017
response, Adidas set out its general approach to ensuring fair wages in its
supply chain and provided an example of the processes it has followed to set
wages in Georgia and the Ukraine.
Conclusion
The instances of human / labour rights
abuses detailed above demonstrate that despite Adidas’ comprehensive HRDD
process, there are failings and gaps in that process that create space for
human rights violations to occur in its supply chains. It also shows that the
paper-based process detailed in this blog has imperfections in practice that
need to be ironed out. Literature has demonstrated that there are often
considerable discrepancies between HRDD processes on paper and in practice,
highlighting gaps in supply chain governance. For example, Genevieve LeBaron has
found
through her research on ethical audits and the supply chains of corporations,
businesses have ‘claimed supply chain monitoring for themselves’ by using
audits as a way to ‘preserve their business model and take responsibility for
supply-chain monitoring out of the hands of governments.’ As such, they have
been able to avoid ‘stricter state and international regulation’ and to take
steps to ensure they are perceived as responsible companies. However, while
this is benefiting businesses by giving the impression that businesses are
taking active steps on the journey to respect human rights, it is failing
workers in supply chains. Human rights violations such as labour abuses are
still widespread within supply chains. Therefore, in order to avoid going down
this path, businesses need to engage with the issues that are arising in their supply
chains, consider the root causes of those issues and make adjustments to HRDD
processes.
This review of Adidas’ HRDD process and the
gaps identified between the process in theory and in practice raises a number
of interesting questions. For example – What precise aspects of Adidas’ identification
of risks process are not living up to their expectations allowing human rights
violations to continue to occur in its supply chains? What steps are Adidas
taking in order to continuously improve its HRDD process? To what extent does
Adidas look to or gain inspiration from the practices of its peers? What
challenges does Adidas currently face in conducting HRDD in its supply chains
and how is it seeking to respond to those challenges?
[4] Adidas Annual
Report 2018, p 72.
[5] Adidas Profile.
[6] Adidas Supply
Chain Approach.
[7] Adidas Assessment
for Re-Accreditation by the Fair Labor Association, p 6.
[8] Adidas Supply
Chain Approach.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Adidas Sustainability
Report 2010, p 42
[20] Adidas Annual
Report 2018, p
98
[26] Adidas Response
to KnownTheChain Apparel and Footwear Benchmark, p 16.
[27] Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Company Action Platform,
Adidas.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Adidas Supply
Chain Approach.
[30] Adidas was
last re-accredited in 2017.
[31] Adidas Sustainability
Report 2010, p
49
[32] See for
example Adidas’ Human Rights and Responsible
Business Practices: Frequently Asked Questions.
[33] Adidas Analysis:
Cross Section of Stakeholder Feedback 2017/2018.