A Company for BAM Practitioners to Watch

One of the goals for those starting Kingdom businesses is to model God's love in the workplace. One of the key decisions to make involves what wage to pay workers. Is it a good witness to run a factory and pay the prevailing wage? Sure, you'll pay your workers for all the time worked, provide them humane working conditions and treat them with dignity. But what if the average wage paid by other factories in the area isn't enough to provide a decent standard of living? For that matter, how will you determine what constitutes and "decent standard of living"?

Once you determine a good wage, then the challenge is maintaining a competitive edge. In the US, where access to quality to workers is often constrained, companies like Starbucks and Zingerman's have found that providing above average compensation packages (compared to their competition) lowers turn-over and provides a better customer experience. This in turns helps them maintain premium pricing and maintain profitability. It's no panacea but it is an effective strategy.


The New York Times today writes about an apparel company that is seeking to determine if this will work in a third-world country like the Dominican Republic—
An Apparel Factory Defies Stereotypes, but Can It Thrive? - NYTimes.com. Will this work in a country where workers are plentiful? In China, we're starting to see a shift as demographics works against the mighty dragon as workers, now increasingly in short supply, get more selective. So factory owners are starting to look elsewhere for cheap labor (see the recent NYT article on Bangladesh moving in on China.

Is it possible that the answer is not to "look for the cheapest labor" but to build a competitive advantage through building a loyal, loving workforce?

Knights Apparel is running the experiment and I will surely be routing for them.