Company Responsibility

Companies and large corporations are faced with a number of responsibilities that they are required to fulfill. As companies grow and break into the countries around the globe, those responsibilities increase. Some of the practices that branches of a company take part in are not apart of the vision of that company. One such company is Gap, Inc.

Gap, Inc. is the mother company of the following clothing chains: Banana Republic, Old Navy (one of my personal favorites), The Gap, and Forth & Towne. The company operates thousands of stores in the United States, Canada, France, and Japan.  In doing so, the company gained $16 billion dollars in revenue in the year 2004 alone. However, with the company’s great gains, came also great scrutiny.

During the 1990s and the early 2000s, the company was attacked by protests by human rights groups, which accused Gap, Inc. of having their products made in sweatshops, having underage factory workers, underpaid workers, and unsafe work conditions. These human right groups filed “a shareholder resolution demanding greater transparency (Lawrence & Weber p. 83)”. Gap, Inc. did the right thing and instead of denying the accusations, the company developed “one of the most comprehensive factory-monitoring programs in the apparel industry (Lawrence & Weber p. 83)”. Gap, Inc. did not only develop a factor monitoring program, but it vowed to take an assessment of its international operations as well. When doing so Gap, Inc. found a number of issues in its factories in its international branches, however, Gap, Inc. fixed those problems, and had the Social Accountability International audit the company’s auditing effort to prove that Gap, Inc. fixed the issues within its other branches and was following through with complaints.

As a global corporate partner it cost Gap, Inc. to admit that the company had issues with its international branches.  However, Gap, Inc, benefited when the company had not just one but two audits done, and one of the audits were from an outside source to prove that the company meant what it said. That was a bold statement to the public! It showed that Gap, Inc. is a company of integrity and standards, that is important in the world today, and when I buy the company’s apparel, I feel safe in knowing that a child did not make the shirt that I just bought.                                             

Reference

Lawrence, A., & Weber, J. Business & Society Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy

           McGraw Hill Companies, Inc 2008