Business sustainability in Bangladesh: An analysis of economic sustainability in ready-made garments industries

Sustainable business practices are long cherished system that business organizations are expected to exercise to sustain their businesses. The Ready-made Garments industries (RMG) in Bangladesh are now facing this crucial question to adopt a sustainable system in operating their businesses. The more the industry experiences rapid growth, the higher the demand for the implementation of sustainability. Though the experienced and old garments are seen quite well in maintaining this sustainability, the newly established RMG factories are blamed for not having sustainable business procedure, especially economic sustainability which relates to labor standards and labor rights. Despite continuous tremendous pressure from government and international communities, these new establishments often emphasize on profit maximization rather good labor practices. This article examines the business sustainability issues on economy aspects in new generation RMG factories in Bangladesh. This economic sustainability includes the functional strategies regulating the human resources, labor rights and labor conditions of a factory. To study these issues, this research follows the mixed-method research approaches to get better findings of the sampled factories. The study is based on findings of factory level investigation and analysis of in-depth semi structured interviews and focus group discussions (FGD). The results of factory visits show that most of the investigated factories are lack of implementation of economic sustainability. The findings from interviews and FGD revealed underlying causes of this lack of implementation.