'When I came here people said: 'She sold out, she went to the private sector',' says Ms Tucker, who has nine people working under her across the region.

'But I have felt more satisfied with what I am doing with Reebok than what I was doing in the NGO world. I did not see changes occurring as quickly there - with business, you are going to [make changes] or we are going to go elsewhere.'

Many big brands are lumped together in the minds of the public when it comes to child-labour scandals, inhumane working conditions and environmental degradation at the factories to whom they outsource production.

Indeed, where there is smoke there is generally fire. But social and environmental compliance is a growing concern that some big brands are going a long way towards addressing - spurred by shareholder activism, globalisation concerns and the increasing importance of good corporate governance.

In 2000, William Anderson left a position as the director of a Hong Kong-based environmental consultancy to head the Asia-Pacific social and environmental affairs department at Adidas-Salomon. The department had been created a couple of years previously and reports directly to the legal counsel on the company's board.

Although environmental and human resources issues had long been on the agenda at Adidas, the company's commitment was given a kick-start by campaigning relating to child-labour issues in Pakistan and India during the 1998 football World Cup in France.

'All of the brands were targeted but Adidas, as the world's premier soccer brand, had more exposure than others because of its profile. That was the stimulus in terms of the creation of a dedicated team,' Mr Anderson says.

In the past decade, Adidas has moved its production out of Europe as part of a restructuring of the original German family business. Today, 60 per cent of Adidas' products come from about 450 factories in 20 countries in Asia - one quarter of which are in China. Two-thirds of its 30-strong compliance department are based in the region, bringing skills that range from environmental engineering to labour law.

While Adidas and Reebok may be competitors in the marketplace, Ms Tucker and Mr Anderson head departments that have benefited from working together.

'Compliance is different than marketing, or sales or even production,' Ms Tucker says.

'Those of us who work in this field pretty much work together. Even if it is Nike, Reebok and Adidas, we share information - but also with our indirect competitors such as the Disneys, the Levi's, the Gaps of the world. Most of us find we can accelerate the pace of change when we work together, especially in the apparel industry.'

They have also joined forces with the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a US-based non-profit organisation chartered in 1999 that is a collaboration of colleges, universities, NGOs and companies.

Representatives of several other big brands sit on the FLA's board of directors and contribute to the cost of third-party external audits at their factories. In addition to internal monitoring procedures by the companies themselves, factories to whom they outsource are subject to unannounced, independent audits in the first industry-wide system that holds apparel and footwear companies and university licensees accountable for the work of their suppliers around the world.

With footwear production, big brands generally account for the majority of a factory's production - giving them financial leverage to bring about change. But apparel can account for as little as 2 per cent of one factory's workload. Human rights and compliance standards are written into the contracts signed with these factories - specifying everything from workers' hours to bathroom facilities and sleeping arrangements.

'Typically we will be 10-20 per cent of a factory's production in the course of a year,' Mr Anderson says.

'If we are trying to bring about change in a factory and we are only 1 per cent of their product, cutting that means nothing to them. There is a financial-product-volume relationship that directly affects your leverage with the supplier.'

Last year, Adidas cut 2 per cent of its factory base for compliance reasons, helped by changes in the economic cycle which has meant production consolidation resulting in a smaller number of factories that are better performers.

'The basic mission for our team is to improve the lives of workers so it is really our last recourse to terminate the factory,' Mr Anderson says.

'What we do if there are problems is to work on them and seek improvement. But you do sometimes get to the point where simply the management does not get the message.'

He has seen an 'enormous change' in basic health and safety standards, starting with the easy, practical improvements such as providing fire extinguishers on factory floors. Management change, however, is a long-term project - particularly in owner-operator factories where there is no middle management structure and a focus on operational management rather than human resources.

'Ideally, what we want is to do ourselves out of a job,' Mr Anderson says.

'We want a well-run business operation that can manage and monitor itself.'

Ms Tucker's team at Reebok has shifted from a policing approach to an educational one, trying to help workers gain a voice through training programmes as well as speaking to management, agents and other business partners.

'Some factories [adhere to Reebok human rights and production standards], some don't. Some are better than others. This is why it is so important to train the workers as well so that they can be monitoring the factories if we are not there,' she says.

'Running away from bad factories is easy. Making the changes that make a difference in workers' lives is much harder,' she says.

Factories are also wising up to compliance monitoring. In China, for example, Ms Tucker explains that fraudulent record-keeping is rife. Only once management realises that they will be found out with falsified records that understate workers' hours or overstate wages do sustainable changes start to occur. Auditors have also learned that to get the truth, it is best to interview workers off-site and away from their supervisors.

Both Ms Tucker and Mr Anderson acknowledge the moving targets they face in a region still growing in importance as a production base. They are realists in an infant sector striving for change.