A critical guide to corporate codes of conduct

Asia Monitor Resource Centre, www.amrc.org.hk, 118 pages, £8.00 (including postage from Hong Kong)

Corporate codes of conduct have been all the rage over the last decade. A code of conduct is a document that outlines standards for ethical business practice, including working conditions.

This useful book develops a sophisticated critique of such codes. The worst kind are internal codes produced by multinational companies or business associations. But even where codes involve external monitoring, workers are given a very passive role and as a result the codes have not alleviated industrial accidents, long hours and low pay.

The authors believe the only sustainable way to improve labour conditions in Asia is to assist workers to organise unions in their workplaces. But they also argue that workers should use the contradictions inherent in the codes (and the opportunities for consumer scrutiny) to organise at work.