Sustainable buyer-supplier relationship through Quality Control in Supplier’s Factory: A Comparative Case Study in Bangladeshi Garment Industry

Although extant literature addresses tensions in buyer-supplier relationship, limited attention has been paid to understand how quality control practices can reduce tensions and maintain a sustainable buyer-supplier relationship. Drawing on this gap, this paper aims to investigate how buyer’s intervention in supplier firms improves product quality performance. Using a root-cause analysis tool, this paper explores how buyer’s quality control initiative influences product quality performance that leads to economic and social sustainability in supplier firms. Following a qualitative research approach, data has been collected from one Danish buyer and four garment suppliers in Bangladesh. Out of four suppliers, two factories are controlled where the buyer firm has intervened the quality control practice while the other two factories are out of intervention initiative. The findings from the two groups are compared and developed propositions. This paper presents a new understanding of how quality control practices contribute to ensure relationship between buyer and supplier, while enhancing economic returns for supplier firm by reducing defects and saving time, and increasing incentive for workers through production target achievement. Thus, quality control intervention eventually leads to supplier firms social and economic sustainability. This study contributes to new insights on the strategies of quality control and sustainability for buyer and supplier in ready-made garments.