Managing diversity, equity and inclusion in Garment Asia

Prof Fang Lee Cooke, 2025

Initially established in the 1970s, Garment Asia (pseudonym) is a Hong Kong-headquartered garment manufacturing MNC that has factories in many lower income countries, including China, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Vietnam. Its shopfloor workers are primarily young workers from villages, many of whom are women. Factories in Mauritius have relied heavily on immigrant workers due to an insufficient domestic labour supply. The Mauritius subsidiary initially employed a large proportion of Chinese migrant workers who were skilled garment makers and relied heavily on overtime wage payments to earn an attractive wage package, which was a typical practice in the manufacturing sector in China. To comply with international labour standards and other relevant international standards as an ethical and progressive company, Garment Asia has decided to reduce the overtime hours for its workers. This made working in its Mauritian factories an unattractive option for Chinese migrant workers, so they returned to China.

At the same time, the Ministry of Labour, Industry Relations, Employment, and Training of Mauritius decided to attract more temporary immigrant workers from Muslim countries to its manufacturing sector, in part to promote its cultural diversity and inclusion agenda. Since nearly 20 percent of the population has an Islamic tradition, it was believed that temporary immigrant workers from Muslim countries could integrate with their fellow workers and the local community in Mauritius more easily than the Chinese immigrant workers, who encountered a greater level of language and cultural barriers.

Garment Asia responded to this government initiative by recruiting its workers from Muslim countries such as Bangladesh. Many of these workers were in their late teens or early 20s, with limited or no garment manufacturing skills. Training was provided to equip these workers with the skills necessary to perform basic production activities. Moreover, to help retain these workers, generous leave entitlements were provided to allow them to visit their families back home. Social events were organized regularly by the company and local workers to integrate these immigrant workers and to make them feel at home.

The global garment sector has become increasingly competitive. Many local or smaller foreign-owned garment factories in Mauritius had been incurring heavy losses, and some had failed to survive. Automation enabled Garment Asia’s Mauritian factories to reduce their dependence on immigrant workers for labour supply. Another strategy was to focus on businesses at the upper end of the product market, which had a higher profit margin to help cover costs.

This case suggests that pressure on one aspect of the human resource management (HRM) function may trigger the need for and challenge other aspects of HRM. Similarly, pressure for diversity, equity and inclusion may come from both external and internal sources. Multinational corporations are particularly vulnerable to institutional and market factors at the regional and local levels, which may render a global HR strategy for developing a corporate image as a responsible and caring employer globally difficult to formulate and implement.