Balancing Sustainability and Resilience in Fashion Supply Networks

The argument is tested against real events rather than abstractions: the Rana Plaza collapse, the 2024 Red Sea shipping crisis, and the EU's shifting corporate sustainability due diligence law, among others. These cases show how purchasing practices, supplier power, and regulatory pressure interact - and why brands that treat the tension as a one-time trade-off tend to do lasting damage to exactly the supplier relationships they can least afford to lose. This expanded edition builds substantially on the author's original conference-length treatment. It adds a deeper investigation of live industry disruptions, a more developed account of what fashion brands, suppliers, regulators, and investors each stand to gain from taking the framework seriously, and an unusually candid chapter on where the argument is weakest - including the limits of proposing a design that has not yet been empirically tested. Structured across three parts - foundations, framework and evidence, and implications - the book moves from literature review and industry analysis through a fully specified set of testable hypotheses, in-depth case studies, a proposed research methodology, and a frank discussion of limitations and future research directions. A glossary of key terms is included for readers new to paradox theory or supply chain resilience scholarship. Written for academics, MBA students, sustainability and procurement professionals, and anyone trying to make sense of why fashion's sustainability commitments so often buckle under real-world pressure, this book offers a framework for thinking about the tension clearly - and a caution against expecting it to disappear.