Please read this case and help me by answering the discussion questions which are listed at the bottom on page 450, use examples from the text with details. Thanks!

CASE ONE After Rana Plaza Around nine in the morning on April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in Savar, Bangladesh, collapsed catastrophically in a hail of twisted concrete, steel bar, and sewing machinery. At the time, more than 3,000 garment workers were on duty in five separate factories, located on the building's third to eighth floors. Photographs of the scene showed hundreds of people-community members, workers from other nearby factories, and police and firefighters-furiously moving debris and pulling people out of rubble. When the rescue and recovery effort was finally suspended more than a week later, 1,134 workers, most of them women, had been found dead; 2,500 others had been hurt, many with amputations and severe head and back injuries.' Most of the victims were under 30, and a fifth of them were teenagers. They had earned in the range of $38 to $102 a month. It was the worst industrial disaster in the history of the global garment industry. The collapsed building was owned by Sohel Rana. Rana, 35, was described as a "gun-toting politician" who "traveled by motorcycle, as untouchable as a mafia don, trailed by his own biker gang." In 2007, he had obtained the permit to build the plaza directly from the mayor of Savar, a political ally, bypassing the standard procedure. The building, which was partly situated on a drained swamp, was initially permitted for five stories; Rana illegally added three more floors between 2008 and 2012 and was in the process of constructing another when the structure collapsed. The architect later said the building had not been designed for industrial use. "If I had known that it was to be an industrial building, I would have taken other measures," he told an investigator." Analysis showed that the building was carrying almost six times more weight than it was designed to bear. Poor-quality concrete and steel used in construction and uneven settlement on saturated soils may also have contributed to the structural failure. The day before, workers reported that large cracks had opened up in the building's walls. An engineer called in to inspect the cracks told Rana that the building needed to be By Anne T. Lawrence. Copyright @ 2015 by the author. All rights reserved. An earlier version of this case was presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Western Casewriters Association. "Report on Deadly Factory Collapse in Bangladesh Finds Widespread Blame," The New York Times, May 22, 2013. Clean Clothes Campaign and the International Labor Rights Forum, Still Waiting: Six Months after History's Deadliest Apparel Industry Disaster, Workers Continue to Fight for Compensation, 2013. 3"The Most Hated Bangladeshi, Toppled from a Shady Empire," The New York Times, April 20, 2013; and "Bangladesh's Paradox for Women Workers," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 15, 2013. "Bangladesh: Rana Plaza Architect Says Building Was Never Meant for Factories," Telegraph (U.K), May 3, 2013. 5* Analysis: Wake-Up Call for Bangladesh's Building Industry," IRIN, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, May 6, 2013; and "Bangladesh Building Collapse Due to Shoddy Construction," National Geographic News, April 25, 2013. 440Easel Idler-Rana Plaza 441 shut down immediately. Managers of a bank and retail shops operating on the first and sec- ond floors told their employees to stay home until the building was declared safe. But Rana himself dismissed the engineer's conclusion. saying. according to witnesses. \"The plaster on the wall is broken. nothing more. It is not a problem."6 Managers of the five Bangladeshi-owned factories operating in rented space in the buildingNew Wave Style. New Wave Bottoms. Phantom Apparels. Phantom Tac. and Ether Texall of which manufactured apparel for export to Western firms. apparently agreed with Rana. The next morning. when garment workers arrived for work. they were greeted by a loudspeaker. \"All the workers of Rana Plaza. go to work. The factory has already been repaired." Workers who objected were threatened with the loss of a month's pay. Shortly after the workday started. factory managers turned on large electric generators located on the third and fourth floors. a common occurrence because of regular power fail- ures in the building. A government report later found that vibrations from the generators had shaken the building. triggering a massive structural failure as the already compromised concrete walls failed. floors began collapsing onto the ones below. and the entire building buckled outward? Several dozen well-known US. and European retailers and brandsincluding Walmart. Benetton. Primark. Children's Place. Loblaw. and Mangowere at the time or had recently sourced products from factories in Rana Plaza. The extensive news cover- age of the disaster repeatedly mentioned these companies and displayed photos of their labels. One particularly gruesome photograph showed a dust-covered human corpse. par- tially buried in rubble. surrounded by clothing tags displaying the logo of the brand Joe Fresh. owned by the Canadian retailer Loblaw. \"I am troubled." Galen Weston. the exec- utive chairman of Loblaw. told reporters. \"that despite a clear commitment to the high- est standards of ethical sourcing. our company can still be part of such an unspeakable tragedy.\"8 Now. Loblawand all the other companies that sourced apparel from suppliers in the low-wage and notoriously unsafe Bangladeshi garment industryfaced a stark and immediate challenge: What should they do now. after Rana Plaza? The Emergence of Bangladesh's Garment Industry At the time of the Rana Plaza collapse. Bangladesh was the site of one of the fastest- growing garment industries in the world. Located between India on the west. north. and east and Burma (Myanmar) on the southeast. Bangladesh (meaning \"the Country of Bengal" in the native Bengali language) sat on a vast delta formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra. and Meghna Rivers. which emptied into the Bay of Bengal. The country. which was predominantly Muslim. had become independent of Pakistan in 1971. With almost 164 million people in a country about the size of Iowa. Bangladesh in 2013 was one of the most densely populated nations in the world. It was also one of the poorest. The United Nations ranked the country 146th (out of 18'?) on its human development index. Fifty-eight per- cent of the population was estimated to live in multidimensional poverty. defined by the United Nations as \"overlapping deprivation in health. education. and standard of living." Forty-three percent lived on $1.25 or less a day. In 2013. the country was still predominantly EmThe Most Hated Bangladeshi, Toppled from a Shady Empire,' op. cit. 3\"Report on Deadly Factory Collapse in Bangladesh Finds Widespread Blame,' The New York Times. May 22. 2013. \"Global Report: The Uncomfortable Truth about Bangladesh.' Canadian Business. June 6. 2013. 442 Cases in Business and Society rural; almost half of Bangladeshis lived off the land, mostly growing rice." The low-lying nation was particularly vulnerable to natural disasters and regularly suffered punishing typhoons and floods. 10 The Bangladeshi ready-made garment industry had its origins in the worldwide quota sys- tems that emerged shortly after the country's independence. The Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) of 1974 capped the volume of textile and apparel exports to the United States and other developed nations from various countries, especially in East Asia. One consequence of the MFA was a shift of manufacturing to other countries, like Bangladesh, that had no prior history of garment production and were therefore not covered by the quotas. In 1978, Desh Garments, headed by Bangladeshi businessman Noorul Quader, negotiated an agreement with Daewoo, a Korean firm, to teach the Bangladeshis how to manufacture apparel." After training in Korea, Quader and his team returned to set up the first export-oriented garment factory in Bangladesh. Development of the industry was further spurred by structural reforms in the 1980s that privatized and deregulated markets, opened the nation to foreign investment, and permitted garment companies to take loans secured by contracts from foreign buyers.12 Once established, the ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh grew steadily. Entre- preneurs flooded into the industry, drawn by low capital requirements, readily available workers, and cheap industrial rents in communities, like Savar, on the outskirts of Dhaka and Chittagong. Large operators secured contracts with Western apparel companies, and small ones emerged to handle their overflow as subcontractors. By 2013, Bangladesh had become the largest garment exporter in the world, after China, employing 4 million workers in 5,600 factories, as shown in Exhibits A and B. Bangladesh exported more than $20 billion of garments annually, accounting for 10 percent of its GDP and more than three-quarters of its total exports by value. (Other exports included frozen shrimp, jute, and leather.) The United States and Canada were the destination of 25 percent of Bangladesh-made garments; more than half went to Europe. Political Influence The burgeoning garment industry wielded great political power in the developing nation. Employers were organized into a powerful trade association, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), founded in 1983. Almost every garment manufacturer joined, because only members were permitted to export garments. With control of the lion's share of exports, the trade association came to function almost as a branch of government. The New York Times reported that the organization performed many official functions, such as regulating and administering exports and collecting fees. BGMEA members sat on government committees on labor and security." A similar orga- nization, the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), represented employers in factories making knitwear, such as sweaters. Nations Development Programme, Human Development 2013. "Bangladesh," CIA Fact Book; and World Bank, "Bangladesh Overview." The history of Bangladesh is recounted in Willem van Schendel, A History of Bangladesh (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2009). "Zoe Chace, "Nixon and Kimchi: How the Garment Industry Came to Bangladesh," Planet Money, aired on National Public Radio December 2, 2013; and "History of Desh Group," at www.deshgroup.com. Although the Multi-Fibre Arrangement and its successor agreements expired in 2004, international trade rules continued to support the country's garment industry. Under the European Union's "everything but arms" rules, designed to benefit poor countries, all apparel imports from Bangladesh were duty-free. The United States also offered Bangladesh trade preferences on a number of products (although not apparel). See the testimony of Lewis Karesh, Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, June 6, 2012, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 13 "Garment Trade Wields Power in Bangladesh," The New York Times, July 24, 2013.Ready-made Garment Industry in Bangladesh Employment in Millions, 19842013 Worker Safety 3.5 _ o 3-0 _ 1 = half a million workers 2.5 2.0 1.5 - 1.0 - 0.5 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 In millions Source: Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, 2013. Graphic design by The Sketchy Pixel. E) 2015A" rights reserved. Used by permission. Factory owners also exercised political power directly. Sixty percent of the 300 mem- bers of Bangladesh's parliament were active in business, and 31 members or their family members owned garment factories.14 A. K Azard, president of the Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry and owner of one of Bangladesh's largest garment factories, also owned a newspaper and a television station.15 Garment employers were major political donors. The director of Transparency Intemational's (TI's) country office explained the reality this way: \"Politics and business [are] so enmeshed that one is kin to the other. There is a coalition between the [garment] sector and people in positions of power.\" 16 In 2012, TI ranked Bangladesh next to last among 14 garment-exporting countries on their corruption perceptions index.\" Garment manufacturers were heavily favored by the government; tax breaks and subsi- dies to the industry were estimated to exceed tax revenues by $1? million a year. Speaking of garment factory owners, the secretary of the Bangladesh nonprofit Citizens for Good Governance stated, \"They extract all kinds of subsidies. They influence legislation. They influence the minimum wage. And beeause they are powerful, they can do, or undo, almost anything, with impunity?\" The tragedy at Rana Plaza, while exceptional in its death toll, was not an isolated event. The safety remrd in Bangladesh's garment industry was one of the worst in the world, with "\"GarmentTrade Wields Power in Bangladesh,\" op. cit. '5\"Er