The analysis shows that the territorial institutional context does not have a statistically significant link to labour standard compliance. The “variegated capitalism effect” is mitigated by several factors, i.e. selection bias, difficulties categorising certain economies, insufficient recognition of Vietnam’s institutional context, and the structural effects of the garment supply network. Also, the paper drills down into Better Work Vietnam’s records to investigate the most common areas of non-compliance in the best- and worst-scoring factories, and finds that the “better” factories are larger in size and also have a higher degree of multi-stakeholder initiative engagement.