Textile and Apparel Industries

U.S. Fashion Brands Endeavors Toward Sustainability from the Kaizen Perspective: A Data-mining Based Lexical Analysis

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Abstract

Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SCM) indicates to a company’s mission and vision that incorporate environmental and social issues into SCM to enhance the company’s environmental and social performance including its suppliers and customers without hampering its overall economic performance. Past researches have been focused on specific aspects of sustainability from the individualistic view and there is a need for conducting further research focusing on sustainability at the organizational level. To address this issue, 44 of publically available sustainability/corporate social responsibility reports from 11 of the top U.S. fashion brands were reviewed using data mining technique. Results showed that all of these brands are practicing continuous improvement, or Kaizen, inherently, even though the term Kaizen might not be explicitly stated in their sustainability practices. Future research is recommended to see how Kaizen principles could yield improvement in various corporate sustainability goals and structures across different fashion brands worldwide.

Keywords: sustainability, kaizen, datamining, fashion brands

How to Cite:

Ha-Brookshire, J. E., Zhao, L., Rana, M. & Li, M., (2019) “U.S. Fashion Brands Endeavors Toward Sustainability from the Kaizen Perspective: A Data-mining Based Lexical Analysis”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 76(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.8847