Modern slavery and accountability in supply chains

: (Alternative Format Thesis)

Abstract

Millions of people are believed to be living in conditions of modern slavery in supply chains around the world. Several high-profile cases in the UK have brought the phenomenon to the public’s attention, including Chinese cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay in 2004 (Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, 2019) and a Polish gang convicted in 2019 (Valíková, 2022). Such instances have led to increased demand for accountability in supply chains from a range of stakeholders.

Organizational responses to modern slavery risk can mitigate the effects of the problem and make it more difficult for those who would abuse people to find places to profit from that misery. Given the importance of the issue from both a human perspective and an organizational risk standpoint, and the ongoing issue of modern slavery in supply chains, research is needed to explore the effectiveness of corporate responses and to identify potential problems. However, very little research to date has been published on organizational efforts to manage modern slavery risk in their supply chains. To investigate supply chain accountability on modern slavery, the thesis adopts a qualitative approach. I interviewed executives, senior managers, policy makers, and academics shaping and researching organizational responses to the modern slavery risks. Analysis of the data found that holding actors to account below tier 1 of supply chains remains problematic. In part this is because visibility remains poor, but there is also a lack of engagement with modern slavery by many organizations. The thesis identifies the consortia purchasing model as offering both financial efficiency and a collective level of risk management which offers the potential to improve on individual organizations’ actions.

This thesis contributes to the literatures on modern slavery, in demonstrating the organizational processes around responses to modern slavery risks; to institutional theory, in contributing to the enabling theories of experimentalist governance theory and professional competition theory within institutional theory to explain the poor response to MSA; and to accountability, in highlighting how inter-organizational collaboration can provide the expertise and scale to overcome inertia.

Date of Award	29 Mar 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Andrew Crane (Supervisor), Johanne Ward-Grosvold (Supervisor) & Vivek Soundararajan (Supervisor)