Islam, Saiful (2025) Supply chain sustainability integration: The case of textile and ready-made garment (RMG) industry of Bangladesh. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis, 299pp.
Abstract
Being second biggest exporter of Textile and RMG products, Bangladesh has been facing challenges to manage sustainability issues in the industry for ages. As sustainability literature in the sector mostly focuses on individual dimension and there is gap of integrated approach, this study tries to identify sustainability challenges in the environmental, social, economic, and macro-infrastructural dimensions. Respective initiatives taken to mitigate those issues along with the sustainability solutions are also addressed accordingly. Following qualitative framework, an integrated model of sustainable textile supply chain management has been proposed. Based on extensive literature review, a semi structured interview protocol was developed to explore the pertinent themes by interviewing relevant stakeholders. The transcribed data are analysed using NVivo to derive the results. In exploring sustainability outlook, triple bottom line (TBL) lens has been used as the guiding theoretical backdrop along with stakeholders’ theory, stakeholders ‘salience model, and stakeholders’ resource-based view (SRBV).
Result shows that the industry has major gaps in sustainability practices in all dimensions. In social side, workers salary is in sub-human level, skill level of the industry and workers is low, health and safety issues are overlooked, working environment is not standardized, workers are overburdened and overstressed. In environmental front, there is no chemical management guideline, monitoring of Effluent Treatment Plant is insufficient, subcontracting units do not maintain environmental obligations, untreated wastewater is released to the water stream and there is no ground water extraction policy yet. In economic perspective, the industry is facing challenges in getting fair prices from the brands, there is gap in value addition, product and market diversification is in infancy stage. In macro environmental consideration, raw materials supply is import-dependant, crisis of energy supply is a regular phenomenon, logistics and transportation system is underdeveloped, there is corruption and capability gap from the regulatory side. The findings also provide some positive practices. The industry has gone through massive retrofitting processes after Rana Plaza collapse. Current working environment is much safer and workers welfare initiatives are in-place. Export-oriented factories are now environmentally concerned, many of energy and resources saving initiatives have been taken, number of LEED certified green factories from Bangladesh are leading the global chart. Surveillance and monitoring mechanism from government agencies, brands, and associations have increased manifolds.
The study incorporates solutions to each dimension of the existing sustainability challenges. Skill enhancement in line with automation, ensuring workers wellbeing, salary adjustment, health insurance and compensation can be offered as social solutions. Circular economy adoption, biological ETP, digital and tech-based monitoring, solid waste infrastructure, greening initiatives can make the industry environment friendly. For economic sustainability, better price negotiation, high-end diversified production, lead time minimisation, and positive global branding initiatives should be taken. This research offers a broader sustainability outlook of Bangladeshi RMG supply chain paving a pathway to reach the vision of exporting 100 billion USD by 2030. For which, infrastructure, communication and transport, port facilities, supplies and concerned stakeholders’ effort must be coordinated along with factory-oriented initiatives.
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