Yiwen Lu, affiliated PhD student with the Accounting Frameworks Platform, Marek Reuter, affiliated researcher, and Torkel Strömsten, Accounting Frameworks Platform Director were recently recognized for their working paper entitled 'Investigating sustainability control practices to foster more decent wages in global supply chains: A case study on 'living wage' implementation in the fashion industry'.

The award was given by the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) at the St. Andrews University during the 32nd International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research. 

The paper constitutes an attempt at ‘Investigating sustainability control practices to foster more decent wages in global supply chains’. It addresses how control practices under the ‘living wage‘ discourse can reframe the question of what constitutes ‘ethical’ or ‘legitimate’ wage decision-making at the site of supplier firms. More specifically, the findings illustrate how wage related supplier controls developed from a purely calculative, monetary focus towards also accommodating (and indeed partly substituting monetary wage increases by) non-monetary and qualitative considerations to enhance workers’ living standards. 

The authors illustrate how this shift from ‘calculation‘ to ‘calqulation’ makes it possible to bridge local challenges and potential contradictions between economic and social goals. Further, they discuss the potential long-term consequences of adding non-financial elements to the total wage package.