Delight at the Counter, Audits at the Factory: Market Legibility and the Form of Corporate Well-Being Investment in Global Value Chains

Firms that commit to stakeholder well-being often spread that commitment unevenly across their value chains. Existing accounts mainly explain how much each group receives. We argue that the form of investment also varies and tends to follow the market legibility of a group’s well-being: whether end purchasers can observe it, attribute it to the firm and act on it. Drawing on the economics of information, we propose that firms tend to make substantive investments where well-being is experienced (customers), performative investments where it is displayed (front-line employees) and auditable investments where it is a credence attribute that buyers cannot verify even after purchase (workers at contract manufacturers). Auditable investments generate verifiable records of activity whether or not conditions change. An exploratory case study of Apple’s value chain in 2010–2025 with 13 coded episodes and a contrast to Fairphone finds a pattern largely consistent with these propositions. Where documented, Apple’s responses to upstream episodes mostly took auditable forms, and changes beyond supplier-code thresholds were made by suppliers at times of labor-market pressure. We evaluate the pattern within Young’s social connection model and suggest two refinements: power over legibility, and a criterion of discharge based on conditions rather than records.