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‘Rising Powers’: Labour and Environmental Standards

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Business Responsibility and Sustainability in India

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Abstract

There is a growing recognition that the ‘Rising Powers’, namely emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil, are transforming the contours of the global economy and bringing about radical shifts in global governance. A critical question that arises is how might these countries influence the ‘rules of the game’ that pertain to international trade, particularly those relating to process standards associated with labour conditions and environmental impacts? This chapter defines the concept of ‘Rising Powers’. It goes on to consider how the Rising Powers might challenge the governance of labour and environmental standards and suggests areas for further research.

An earlier, and longer, version of this chapter was published as the introductory article of a special issue of Oxford Development Studies (vol. 42, 2, June 2014) on the theme of ‘Rising Powers and Labour and Environmental Standards: Challenges to the global governance of consumption, production and trade’. My thanks to the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK, who funded research that underpinned this work through the ‘Rising Powers and Global Standards Research Network’ grant (RES-075-25-0028) and the ‘Rising Powers, Labour Standards and Governance of Global Production Networks’ grant (ES/J013234/1). Original article, Khalid Nadvi (2014) “Rising Powers” and Labour and Environmental Standards, Oxford Development Studies, 42: 2, 137–150, https://doi.org/10.1080/13600818.2014.909400, published under a Creative Commons License (CC BY 3.0).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Khalid Nadvi

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  1. Khalid Nadvi
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Correspondence to Khalid Nadvi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Bimal Arora

  2. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Pawan Budhwar

  3. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Divya Jyoti

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Nadvi, K. (2019). ‘Rising Powers’: Labour and Environmental Standards. In: Arora, B., Budhwar, P., Jyoti, D. (eds) Business Responsibility and Sustainability in India. Palgrave Studies in Indian Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13716-8_2

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