Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Innovation Strategies for Textile Companies in Bangladesh: Development Using Quadrant Analysis Based on a Productivity Index
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The textile industry plays a critical role in promoting economic growth in a country where economic development is actively underway [1]. The growth of textile companies can be realized through cost reduction achieved via technological innovation. Bangladesh has recently emerged as a major producer of ready-to-wear apparel in the international market. The country, along with other emerging Asian nations, is expanding its exportation initiatives through growth in the textile industry. Its textile industry was founded 30 years ago, but textile production in the country has recently grown so rapidly that it has achieved close to 84% of the nation’s exports, and was made just 2019 [2]. In 2019, Bangladesh became the second largest RMG (ready-made garment) manufacturing and production base after China, but it is expected to become a larger production. Bangladesh has plans to achieve a $50 billion export income by 2030 [2]).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents research related to the productivity of textile companies, and Section 3 discusses the research framework used to establish innovation strategies. Section 4 describes the results of the application of the framework to a sample of textile companies in Bangladesh.
When unskilled workers are unproductive, they increase the cost of production per unit [18]. In Bangladesh, the productivity of workers is low, accounting for only a quarter of that of their Chinese counterparts. Yet, the CEOs of Bangladeshi textile companies are very reluctant to invest in training and development facilities, despite the fact that training leads to increased productivity [19]. Such companies suffer from crises because of the employment of unskilled workers, the lack of awareness among CEOs, and poor infrastructure.
The textile industry is a production sector that produces tangible goods. The output is most typically measured by many researchers through variables related to sales. Mai et al. (2020) used the average value of a textile company as an output variable [29] and Kapelko and Lansink (2015) used total turnover and net profit as output variables [40]. In order to extract the MPI of the textile company, output related to sales was mainly used. Therefore, this study also used net profit and total turnover related to sales as output variables.