930417

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BASXXX10.1177/0007650320930417Business & SocietyCaruana et al.

Special Issue Article

Business & Society

Modern Slavery in
2021, Vol. 60(2) 251­–287
© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0007650320930417
https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650320930417

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Robert Caruana1, Andrew Crane2,

Stefan Gold3, and Genevieve LeBaron4

Abstract
“Modern slavery,” a term used to describe severe forms of labor exploitation,
is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research.
As a novel phenomenon, it offers potential for innovative theoretical
and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research
questions. And yet, development into what we might call a “field” of
modern slavery research in business and management remains significantly,
and disappointingly, underdeveloped. To explore this, we elaborate on the
developments to date, the potential drawbacks, and the possible future
deviations that might evolve within six subdisciplinary areas of business and
management. We also examine the value that nonmanagement disciplines
can bring to research on modern slavery and business, examining the
connections, critiques, and catalysts evident in research from political
science, law, and history. These, we suggest, offer significant potential for
building toward a more substantial subfield of research.

Keywords
business, forced labor, history, law, management, modern slavery, political
science

1
University of Nottingham, UK
2
University of Bath, UK
3
University of Kassel, Germany
4
University of Sheffield, UK

Corresponding Author:
Andrew Crane, School of Management, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: [email protected]
252 Business & Society 60(2)

Modern slavery is an urgent societal problem that has increasingly grabbed

the attention of policy makers, civil society, the general public, and even
business leaders. Acknowledgment of both the scale and illegitimacy of mod-
ern slavery has led to new legislation such as the California Transparency in
Supply Chain Act, 2010 in the United States and the Modern Slavery Act,
2015 in the United Kingdom, urging the business community to prevent mod-
ern slavery from entering their supply chains. As Paul Polman, former CEO
of Unilever, said in 2018 on the launch of the B-Team’s guide for CEOs to
eradicate modern slavery, “Modern slavery is unacceptable and it is incum-
bent upon us, as business leaders, to use our leverage both individually and
collectively to do everything we can to eradicate this scourge.”1
Given all the attention, it is hardly surprising that the rise of the term “mod-
ern slavery” to describe particular forms of extreme exploitation has prompted
growing scholarly interest from within the business and management field
(LeBaron & Crane, 2019; Phung & Crane, 2019). While contributions to date
have been largely theoretical and primarily focused on supply chain manage-
ment (SCM; Gold et al., 2015; New, 2015), the literature is beginning to
expand and diversify in terms of theory, method, and scope.
However, we argue in this article that the “field” of study focused on the
business of modern slavery within the discipline of business and manage-
ment remains highly underdeveloped. Although there is well-intentioned
movement toward a business and management perspective on modern slav-
ery, much of this literature tends to provide unhelpful caricatures of modern
slavery, for example, as good/bad for business, as simply an economic exter-
nality, or by invoking modern slavery in a nebulous, superficial, or undefined
way that tends to conflate it with exploitation or “sweatshops.” Ironically,
business and management accounts overlook the dynamics most closely
aligned with their disciplinary focus, namely, an in-depth analysis of the busi-
ness of modern slavery, including the nature and prevalence of modern slav-
ery within the businesses and supply chains of various sectors and parts of the
world; the organizational and supply chain dynamics that give rise to it; and
the business actors and models through which it flourishes.
At the outset of this special issue process, we were excited to showcase
key insights from the field of business and modern slavery within a special
issue of this journal. In the end, we have come up somewhat short, with just
three articles and an invited commentary accepted for publication. Therefore,
notwithstanding the excellent contributions in what has turned out to be a
special section rather than a full special issue, we have come to appreciate
that the “field” of modern slavery in business and management overall is in a
sad and sorry state. That is, there are very few high-quality contributions that
have been published to date, and there is little evidence of a flourishing body
Caruana et al. 253

of work in progress. Even after more than 20 years since the original publica-
tion of Kevin Bales’ (1999) groundbreaking book on modern slavery,
Disposable People, modern slavery is hardly in fact a field at all in business
and management. To all intents and purposes, it is a nonfield.
The limited quality and quantity of business and management research on
the topic of modern slavery belies its potential relevance to a wide range of
business and management disciplines, from SCM to human resource man-
agement (HRM) and organizational behavior through to finance, accounting,
strategy, and marketing. The relative lack of attention from these disciplines
until now in part reflects a historical tendency to exclude slavery from
accounts of modern management (Cooke, 2003). This is an unfortunate (and
inaccurate) omission, given that some preindustrial forms of slavery such
as plantations exhibited labor techniques associated with modern industrial
capitalism—performance monitoring, division of labor, and the separation of
ownership and control (Cooke, 2003).
Yet, all is not doom and gloom. The tendency to ignore the business and
management side of modern forms of slavery is slowly diminishing. Although
much of the intellectual thrust for this comes from outside of the business and
management discipline, there are a few notable examples of progress from
within, especially in the subfield of SCM. We hope that this article and col-
lection will help to catalyze the nascent insights of this burgeoning (non)field
and spur new scholarship.
In this article, our aim is to develop a platform to inspire and inform those
seeking to explore modern slavery from a business and management lens,
and to locate the contributions published in this special themed section. To
establish this platform, we do two things (summarized in Figure 1, below).
First, we identify some key disciplinary areas of scholarship within business
and management and (a) map out the theoretical developments that have
occurred so far in each area, (b) identify where the main drawbacks are in the
theoretical resources of each subdiscipline which inhibit knowledge creation
on modern slavery and business, and (c) explore potential deviations where
the distinctiveness of the issue of modern slavery might prompt new path-
ways for theory in each area. Specifically, we focus on SCM, accounting,
HRM, marketing, strategy, and social issues in management (SIM), as six
areas where we considered modern slavery might be most relevant and there-
fore most likely to have been addressed.
Second, we enrich this analysis by reference to some key disciplines
beyond business and management studies where modern slavery has been
more extensively researched, and where issues related to modern slavery in
business specifically have been addressed. For the sake of brevity, we focus
on three disciplines that we believe have particular relevance for modern
254 Business & Society 60(2)

Figure 1. A multidisciplinary perspective on modern slavery research in business

and management.

slavery research in business and management: law, political science, and

history. Within each, we (a) map out existing connections between extant
research on modern slavery in the discipline and issues relevant to business
and management, (b) identify important critiques of the understanding of
modern slavery in business and management studies from that discipline, and
(c) explore potential catalysts where research from the discipline and research
from business and management studies might be fruitfully brought together.
Although not intended as a review of all the research on modern slavery out-
side business and management, our analysis of these three disciplines should
provide a solid foundation for future interdisciplinary research and hopefully
spark significant contributions to the literature.
Before proceeding, it is important to note that modern slavery is a con-
tested term. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the
term modern slavery is an umbrella term that describes a number of coercive
labor practices such as indentured labor, debt bondage, forced labor, servi-
tude, and human trafficking. However, some scholars and activists reject the
term modern slavery, seeing it as a nebulous, poorly and inconsistently
defined catch-all term with little explanatory power. They note that those who
use this term frequently misrepresent the nature of the problem of severe
labor exploitation (Beutin, 2019; LeBaron, 2018; O’Connell Davidson, 2015)
Caruana et al. 255

and may even unwittingly reinforce the problems they claim to challenge
(Bunting & Quirk, 2017; Shih, 2015).
We are using the term modern slavery in this article and in the special
section because it is the term most commonly used by scholars of business
and management studies. By modern slavery, we refer to “situations of
exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence,
coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power” (ILO, 2017, p. 9). However,
unlike the ILO definition, we are not including forced marriage within our
object of study, and further, we acknowledge that economic coercion—
namely the threat of destitution—can be an important factor shaping vulner-
ability to forced labor (for discussion of economic coercion, see LeBaron &
Gore, 2019). In the next section, we turn to our review of research on mod-
ern slavery in some of the main business and management subdisciplines,
before proceeding to examine broader disciplines beyond business and
management.

Research on Modern Slavery in Business and

Management Subdisciplines
While there has been a gradual increase in research on modern slavery within
business and management, it is still very limited in both scope and depth.
SCM scholars have been relatively early adopters of the topic so far but what
contributions have been made from other subdisciplines? Have, for example,
scholars of accounting and finance shed light on the financial mechanisms
that keep illegal streams of revenue flowing from modern slavery operations?
Or have marketing scholars identified the specific role of consumption in
creating and maintaining coercive labor practices? We articulate the develop-
ments, drawbacks, and deviations of six key subdisciplines (summarized in
Table 1).

SCM
In terms of developments, the SCM literature has paid more attention to mod-
ern slavery than any other subdiscipline of business and management, par-
ticularly in terms of definitions, detection, and remediation of modern slavery
within supply chain partnerships. For example, an early definition of modern
slavery in the SCM literature is provided by Gold and colleagues (2015) “as
the exploitation of a person who is deprived of individual liberty anywhere
along the supply chain, from raw material extraction to the final customer, for
the purpose of service provision or production” (p. 487).
 Table 1. Developments, Drawbacks, and Deviations in Business Subdisciplines.

256
Subdiscipline Developments Drawbacks Deviations

SCM •• Supply chain–specific •• SCM literature predicated on formal, •• Focus on labor supply chains and role of
definitions of modern slavery transparent, product supply chains labor market intermediaries
•• Enablers and constraints to •• Limited understanding of •• Rethinking dominant instrumental logic of
detection imposed by supply distinctiveness of modern slavery sustainable SCM
chain structures compared with other sustainable •• SCM antecedents of modern slavery
•• Remediation through supply supply chain issues
chain partners •• Inadequate attention to effects of
core SCM practices in giving rise to
modern slavery
Strategy •• Strategic capabilities for •• Exclusion of informal and illegal •• Explaining inattention to modern slavery
engaging in modern slavery organizations in mainstream literature among managers
•• Business models of modern •• Focus on shareholder value •• Value creation/capture drivers of modern
slavery maximization over societal impact slavery
•• Role of CSR and partnerships •• Corporate-level antecedents of compliance
in addressing modern slavery to modern slavery–related stakeholder
expectations
•• New approaches, theories, empirical
methods for tackling “grand challenges”
SIM •• Understanding complicity, •• Excessive focus on the business case •• Ethical analysis of modern slavery contexts
responsibility, and for CSR and actor relationships
accountability in relation to •• Concentration on large, visible, •• Analysis of political CSR responsibilities for
labor conditions and human legitimate companies modern slavery within global governance
rights abuses gaps
•• Business and NGO responses •• Extending business and human rights
to public discourses on research to modern slavery dialogue,
modern slavery remedy, rescue, and rehabilitation
(continued)
 Table 1. (continued)

Subdiscipline Developments Drawbacks Deviations

HRM •• Understanding forms and •• Focus on legitimate labor settings •• Exploring the lived experience of new actors
drivers of exploitative working •• Dominant disciplinary frames, e.g., and intermediaries involved in managing in
conditions high performance management, modern slavery business
•• Effects of efforts to tackle employment relations, and collective •• Contextual contingencies enabling HRM
exploitation bargaining practices to exploit labor
•• Organizational and policy •• Methodological reliance on surveys •• Role of alternative organizational forms in
determinants of precariousness sustaining/interrupting modern slavery
Accounting •• Accounting for human rights •• Failure to examine distinctive •• New forms of accounting for modern slavery
•• Corporate reporting on characteristics of modern slavery •• New sources and types of accounting data
modern slavery businesses and their accounting related to modern slavery
•• Reliance on government-mandated •• Alternative and shadow accounts of modern
modern slavery transparency slavery
regulation •• Impact of modern slavery on accounting
profession and practices
Marketing •• Modern slavery as an element •• Inadequate monitoring and detection •• Consumer responses to slave-free labeling
of ethical and fair trade informing antislavery labeling and and certification
consumption certification •• Research on antislavery consumption
•• Marketing and communication •• Bias in consumer research practices
strategies of antislavery •• Constraining/liberating consumption
organizations practices of modern slavery victims

Note. SCM = supply chain management; SIM = social issues in management; NGO = nongovernmental organization; HRM = human resource management; CSR: corporate
social responsibility.

257
258 Business & Society 60(2)

Theory building in this field has helped SCM scholars recognize the unique
characteristics of modern slavery that influence effective management
(Stevenson & Cole, 2018). Gold and colleagues (2015) see the main impedi-
ments to the practice of slavery detection connected to the restricted visible
horizon (Carter et al., 2015) that prevents the focal company fulfilling its mon-
itoring role in global supply chains (Busse et al., 2017). As Kim and Davis
(2016) have demonstrated in relation to conflict minerals, the greater the level
of diversification and dispersal of supply chain, the less able the firms are to
vouch for their sources. For others, the problem is more conceptual in nature.
For example, New (2015) has suggested that labor supply chains have been
largely overlooked, with SCM scholars prioritizing flows of commodities,
rather than people (see also Allain et al., 2013). The suggestion that modern
slavery is linked to the supply chain of workers as well as the supply chain of
materials may go some way to explain why modern slavery may evade tradi-
tional supply chain mapping techniques (Crane et al., 2019; New, 2015). This
kind of thinking has encouraged novel approaches to remediation, such that
horizontal (rather than vertical), multitier (rather than singular), and bottom-
up (vs. top-down) conceptions of supply chain relationships may reveal new
opportunities for collaborating with supply chain partners against modern
slavery (Benstead et al., 2018; Russell et al., 2018; Wilhelm et al., 2016).
Turning to drawbacks, it has been widely argued that modern slavery is
distinct in important ways from other social issues dealt with by SCM, espe-
cially in that it is illegal, often hidden, and involves a range of labor market
intermediaries (Crane et al., 2019; New, 2015; Stevenson & Cole, 2018). The
SCM literature, however, is predicated on understanding formal, relatively
transparent, product supply chains, which means that much of the extant the-
ory is limited in its ability to adequately conceptualize modern slavery issues.
This necessitates new SCM approaches regarding standard setting, risk
avoidance, detection, and remediation (Stevenson & Cole, 2018). This might
usefully begin with some sustained introspection on fundamental SCM think-
ing, which may unwittingly continue to nurture ripe contexts for slave labor,
given the unswerving emphasis placed on exerting buyer power over inter-
mediaries to achieve ever-lower prices (Kraljic, 1983).
In terms of deviations, one key issue could be to refocus on the labor sup-
ply chains that fuel operations, in addition to the traditional focus on material
and finance supply chains (Crane et al., 2019; New, 2015; Stevenson & Cole,
2018). This could give rise to new conceptualizations of the role of labor
market intermediaries in supply chains, building on nascent work on interme-
diaries in sustainable SCM (Reinecke et al., 2018; Soundararajan & Brammer,
2018; Soundararajan et al., 2018). Another possible deviation could be the
distinct readjustment of the foundations of sustainable SCM research and
Caruana et al. 259

business practice (Matthews et al., 2016). Departing from dominant instru-

mental logics and profit focus (Pagell & Shevchenko, 2014), sustainable
SCM could shift attention to a more caring stance for people and the sur-
rounding environment, for example, by assuming the theoretical perspective
of “recognition” as proposed by Gold and Schleper (2017). This may precipi-
tate a shift away from labor “risk” toward labor “care” or “stewardship”
along supply chains. Finally, and more broadly, there is an opportunity for
SCM research to better recognize and make sense of the role of conventional
SCM practices in giving rise to modern slavery in business in the first place.
Rather than seeing modern slavery as an aberration or an unexpected feature
of global supply chains, SCM research could shift toward identifying the
forms, contexts, and dynamics of SCM in which modern slavery is likely to
emerge in more or less predictable ways.

Strategy
The strategy area has made some more limited developments into under-
standing modern slavery, specifically how it can be an outcome of strategic
decisions by firms, as well as how firms might develop strategies to tackle
modern slavery in their own operations. Crane’s (2013) article on modern
slavery as a management practice represents probably the first systematic
attempt to explain modern slavery in terms of strategy concepts. Specifically,
Crane (2013) explores the institutional contexts conducive to slavery, and the
distinct strategic competences that firms need to exploit these contexts and
sustain slavery, despite its illegality. More broadly, a number of studies have
shown how firm strategies that rely on low-cost and subminimum wage labor,
high levels of outsourcing, contract labor, and global supply chains are likely
to be associated with greater modern slavery risks (Allain et al., 2013; Crane
et al., 2019; Lalani & Metcalf, 2012; Stringer & Michailova, 2018). This has
given rise to more detailed analysis of “business models for oppression”
(Martí, 2018), including, for example, the elaboration of a typology of differ-
ent business model innovations of modern slavery (Crane et al., 2018), and
estimates of the profitability of different slavery business models (Kara,
2009, 2017).
In terms of corporate strategies to tackle modern slavery, SCM has been
the most prominent approach, but there has also been some limited attention
paid to the potential and limits of corporate social responsibility (CSR), self-
regulation, and cross-sector collaboration (Foot, 2015; New, 2015). In the
main though, contributions to these debates have primarily come from out-
side management—and usually in the form of critiques of corporate practice
and private governance initiatives—as we will discuss below.
260 Business & Society 60(2)

Turning to drawbacks, it is clear that strategy researchers have been slow

to capitalize on the early attention toward modern slavery, with barely a
handful of published studies to date. Partly, this is probably due to the general
exclusion of consideration of informal and illegal organizations in the main-
stream strategy literature (Webb et al., 2014), as well as a prevailing focus on
issues relating to organizational performance and shareholder value maximi-
zation over societal impact (Walsh et al., 2003). Involuntary labor does not fit
easily within a subject that, at best, considers social issues as “market fric-
tions” (Luo & Kaul, 2019).
Given that “theory contributions in strategic management extend, clarify,
or apply received theories in new and interesting ways,” (Makadok et al.,
2018, p. 1530), we suggest that there are numerous ways that a focus on
modern slavery could prompt novel deviations in our understanding of com-
mon strategy concepts and approaches. At the microlevel, this could include
theories relating to top management teams, managerial cognition, and man-
aging paradoxes that might explain why the issue of modern slavery is or is
not recognized and acted upon by companies, in the same way that corporate
inattention to climate change is being increasingly better understood (T.
Hahn et al., 2014; Slawinski et al., 2017). At the firm and value chain level,
theories of value creation and value capture (Lepak et al., 2007) could shed
light on both the drivers of modern slavery as well as potential pathways for
interventions. At the level of corporate strategy, theories explaining corpo-
rate structure and ownership, corporate political action (Lord, 2000), as well
as strategic responses to institutional pressures (Oliver, 1991) could feed
into explanations of how companies resist, comply, or evade growing expec-
tations to tackle modern slavery. For example, the article in this special sec-
tion by Monciardini and colleagues (2021) draws on endogeneity of law
theory developed by Edelman suggesting how managerialization of modern
slavery law may drive merely symbolic business responses to modern slav-
ery. The study underlines that going “beyond compliance” per se does not
imply effective corporate action, highlighting the leading role of organiza-
tion’s internal and external compliance professionals in framing ambiguous
rules and devising organizational response strategies to modern slavery
legislation.
More broadly, a key development in the attention of strategy researchers
to modern slavery could potentially be the recent reinvigoration of manage-
ment research in relation to “grand challenges” of which modern slavery is
explicitly incorporated (Ferraro et al., 2015; George et al., 2016). This marks
a shift in emphasis from strategy research focusing primarily on firm perfor-
mance toward the application of strategy concepts to enhancing our under-
standing of how firms and other organizations can tackle the major societal
Caruana et al. 261

problems of our time. This indicates growing recognition that the conceptual
tools of the strategy field might be usefully redeployed toward addressing
problems such as modern slavery, or even that new approaches are emerging
that might be better suited for this purpose.

SIM
Social problems have been the main focus of the SIM subfield, and so this is
perhaps the most obvious area to find research on modern slavery. Surprisingly
though, there has been little explicit attention to the issue. Most of the develop-
ments in the SIM field to date have been concerned with “sweatshop” labor
arrangements (Miklós, 2019; Pines & Meyer, 2005; Radin & Calkins, 2006)
and human rights abuses (Cragg et al., 2012; Wettstein, 2010) with human
trafficking and modern slavery only entering these conversations at the mar-
gins. A notable example of SIM research that does specifically address
modern slavery is Dahan and Gittens’ (2010) investigation of business and
nongovernmental organization (NGO) responses to public discourses on mod-
ern slavery. In their study, rather than finding a distinct, consensual definition
of modern slavery, the contribution lies in illustrating how the term can be
deployed heterogeneously depending on actor interests: “the industry tends to
refer to the issue as ‘abusive labor conditions’, which sounds a lot less dire
than ‘forced labor’ or ‘worst forms’ of labor . . . while only NGOs and activists
use the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘torture’, to catch the public’s attention” (Dahan &
Gittens, 2010, p. 234).
While slender at present, the body of literature in SIM on business, human
rights, and working conditions should provide a solid foundation for research
on modern slavery, given the contributions so far to understanding issues of
complicity, responsibility, and accountability in relation to multinational cor-
porations. For example, the article by Van Buren and colleagues (2021)
within this special section synthesizes recent research on business responsi-
bility and culpability for forced labor in supply chains from literatures across
the social sciences, and demonstrates its relevance to SIM literature on due
diligence approaches to combat human trafficking.
With respect to the drawbacks, a key issue is the fixation in the field on the
“business case” for socially responsible behavior (Carroll & Shabana, 2010).
Adopting this lens is likely to lead scholars to overlook some of the unique
characteristics of modern slavery, seeing it primarily in terms of potential
reputational risk rather than an important problem in its own right. Moreover,
in common with other areas of business and management, there is a strong
proclivity to focus on large, visible, and legitimate organizations in the SIM
domain. Very little research is done in the shadows where smaller and more
262 Business & Society 60(2)

informal labor arrangements may occur, but exactly where modern slavery
knowledge is required.
This is precisely where the potential deviations in the field may arise.
While, for example, it might be helpful to show how deontology provides a
more robust rationale against sweatshop labor than does utilitarianism (Radin
& Calkins, 2006), ethical questioning could fruitfully be extended to the
study of victim–perpetrator, victim–victim, and victim–rescuer relationships
in business. We know, for example, that certain cultural contexts render slav-
ery morally permissible, despite its illegality. It could be useful then to ask
what ethical manipulations, distortions, or silent moral complicities structure
and maintain key relationships around modern slavery businesses? Also,
applying theories of political CSR (Scherer & Palazzo, 2011), and corporate
citizenship (Matten & Crane, 2005), where companies are seen as key actors
in administering social, political, and civil rights, could give rise to novel
analyses of corporate roles in addressing modern slavery within global gov-
ernance gaps where there is little infrastructure to administer rights. We note,
for example, that there has been some research in the area of business and
human rights. While it presently operates “at the edges” of the SIM literature,
between either supply chain (Hampton, 2019) or compliance and law (Mehra
& Shay, 2016; Ruggie & Sherman, 2015; Van Dijk et al., 2018), it could be
an area of great scholarly potential, given its focus upon human rights abuses.
Work here could investigate a number of substantive corporate practices in
administering rights beyond codes of conduct and other private governance
regimes to include issue-raising dialogue with local authorities such as police,
NGOs and communities, rescue and rehabilitation centers as well as extended
microcredit facilities to the extremely poor.

HRM
Another subfield that would seem to be a likely place to find a significant
stream of research on modern slavery is the main business and manage-
ment area concerned with employer–employee relationships, namely, HRM.
However, as with SIM, while there is a considerable body of work in HRM on
exploitative working practices, most stops short of addressing slavery-like
practices specifically. In terms of developments then, the main contribution is
probably from illustrating the specific labor management aspects of global
commodity chains (Alamgir & Banerjee, 2019; Khan et al., 2007).
Soundararajan and colleagues (2018), for example, identify that Western firms
typically lack an understanding of the local labor dynamics necessary to
improve poor working conditions. “Boundary work” done by sourcing agents
can, they suggest, lead to better governance by bridging supplier–buyer
Caruana et al. 263

relationships. More critically, Khan and colleagues (2007) highlight the

unseen effects of attempts to institutionalize the eradication of labor exploita-
tion, finding that in child labor projects, “the benefits for children were ques-
tionable” (Khan et al., 2007, p. 1056). The HRM study that comes closest to
specifically addressing modern slavery is Yea and Chok’s (2018) exploration
of migrant workers. They explicitly discuss the term “unfree labor,” connect it
to temporal and spatial precariousness, and outline the array of labor mecha-
nisms (e.g., wage theft and document manipulation) that combine to extort
labor under duress, adding that when these “operate in concert with migration
and labour policies that curtail migrant workers’ rights and bargaining power,
this renders precarious workers unfree at particular junctures in their sojourns”
(Yea & Chok, 2018, p. 926).
The drawbacks of HRM principally concern the unswerving focus upon
conventional HRM practices and mechanisms in legitimate labor settings,
with a significant orientation toward instrumental, “strategic” HRM. This may
present significant challenges for HRM scholars seeking to investigate mod-
ern slavery within recognizable disciplinary frames such as high performance
management, employment relations, and collective bargaining. Some may not
see the phenomenon of modern slavery as falling within the purview of their
area at all or, for some more critical scholars, may simply become a political
vehicle to highlight the failings of modern management practices. Research
design represents a final potential drawback with HRM research often favor-
ing surveys and other quantitative methods over the ethnographic “work in the
field” that is typically needed to unlock modern slavery practices.
Nonetheless, modern slavery offers several interesting deviations for
motivated HRM scholars. First, it offers the opportunity to explore the lived
experience of pivotal agents within and around modern slavery businesses.
For example, from the above discussion of Soundararajan and colleagues
(2018), it might be possible to explore the “boundary work” of actors located
in “darker” parts of the global supply chain, where agents work between both
legitimate (e.g., local authorities) and illegal organizations (e.g., organized
crime gangs). Second, there are opportunities to explore the HRM practices
used to extort labor, at specific moments, under certain circumstances and in
unique combinations. For, as Yea and Chok (2018) noted of migrant labor,
the capacity to extort work was achieved by cumulatively extending migrant
vulnerability through a toxic combination of practices administered at pre-
carious moments in time. A final deviation may be attributed to the organiza-
tion theory literature. Research into (alternative) organizing could help throw
light on how different organizational forms can be deployed to both sustain
as well as interrupt coercive labor practices. For example, the article in this
special section by Rosile and colleagues (2021) testifies to the possibilities of
264 Business & Society 60(2)

transforming labor oppression via new forms of organizing that they describe
as “Ensemble Leadership,” thus providing resilient grounds for establishing
worker-led social responsibility.

Accounting
The accounting subfield has probably the most substantial literature within
business and management on earlier forms of slavery, where accounts from
plantations and slave traders have provided a rich resource for understanding
the business of historical slavery (Pinto & West, 2017; Rodrigues & Craig,
2018; Tyson et al., 2004). Despite this, the discipline has been surprisingly
slow to attend to more contemporary forms of slavery. What developments
there have been thus far have mainly followed two trajectories. First, there is
a stream of research that addresses the accounting practices of legitimate
businesses but under the general label of human rights rather than modern
slavery per se. O’Brien and Dhanarajan (2016), for example, state recent
tendencies toward governmental directions encouraging business to exert
human rights due diligence, especially in high-risk conflict areas such as the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; Hofmann et al., 2018). A second,
related, stream of literature has begun to examine modern slavery reporting
specifically, such as in response to, or readiness for, transparency in supply
chain (TISC) legislation (Birkey et al., 2018; Christ et al., 2019). Although
limited in scope so far, this research has generally shown a relative lack of
substance and quality of disclosure in modern slavery reporting.
A major drawback for the development of a rich accounting perspective
on modern slavery is the failure thus far to examine the distinctive character-
istics of modern slavery businesses. Due to the scale, distribution, and covert
nature of coercive revenue yield, traditional auditing and accounting sys-
tems—even those adapted toward human rights—will struggle to capture and
interpret indicators of slavery. Another drawback could arise from excessive
reliance on governments as standard setters for accounting and reporting on
slavery (similar to highly regulated financial accounting). There is some
recent evidence that the effectiveness of government regulation is likely to be
diluted by lobbying activities, as for example, by major professional consul-
tancy and audit companies who promote transnational labor governance
regimes that are regulated by soft law (Fransen & LeBaron, 2019).
Despite the relatively limited response from accounting scholars so far,
there are numerous opportunities for attention to modern slavery to spur sig-
nificant deviations and advancements in research on accounting and account-
ability. For example, the problems of visibility indicated above might prompt
attention to new sets of indicators and veer away from an idea of the
Caruana et al. 265

accountant as focal information-absorbing entity. As such, accounting for

modern slavery could increasingly be conceived as decentralized, driven by
the availability of big data (Teoh, 2018), new technologies such as distributed
ledger (Kokina et al., 2017), and new tools of data analysis such as agent-
based modeling (Chesney et al., 2017).
A key challenge in developing accounting research on modern slavery
(especially in contrast to many historical forms of slavery) is the lack of
access to reliable data, given that practices in this area are often illegal and
informal. One way beyond this would be to take inspiration from studies of
other similar contexts, like drugs and prostitution (LeBaron & Crane, 2019),
undocumented workers (Neu, 2012), and migration (Agyeman & Lehman,
2013). Another alternative would be to strengthen links with other disciplines
such as SCM discussed above and informatics to tap new sources of data such
as satellite images and internet-based financial transactions (Gao & Xu,
2009), and to use new technologies that allow for decentralized data collec-
tion, for example, via smartphones. In this way, official accounts and alterna-
tive—so-called shadow accounts (Rodrigue, 2014)—may be effectively
integrated into the overall puzzle set.
Looking forward, there are at the time of writing two special issue calls for
papers in the accounting field specifically dedicated to modern slavery. These
also clearly offer potential for important new directions in scholarship. For
example, the call in the British Accounting Review seeks insights into how
modern slavery will “shape the future of the accounting profession,” while
the call in the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal frames mod-
ern slavery issues in terms of how they are “transforming the accounting
landscape.”2 Time will tell whether such ambitions are realized.

Marketing
Scholarly research on modern slavery from the marketing subfield has been
scant. That said, there is a related body of work on ethical consumption and
fair trade more generally that could provide a platform for future develop-
ments (Ballet et al., 2014; Devinney et al., 2010; Harrison et al., 2005;
McDonagh, 2002). The general thrust of this literature is that a consumer,
well informed about human rights, forced and child labor, may seek to trans-
late their concerns into product purchases that are slavery-free or boycott
those that are not (N. C. Smith, 1990). To date, there is mixed evidence on
whether labor practices in the supply chain are likely to prompt consumer
responses of these kinds, especially without some kind of direct consumer-
related benefit such as quality, price, or convenience (Carrigan & Attalla,
2001; Devinney et al., 2010; Valor, 2007).
266 Business & Society 60(2)

Of these studies, few explicitly examine the specific context of modern

slavery. One early study that does, emphasizes the specific role of marketing
communications of NGOs like Anti-Slavery International (ASI) in leverag-
ing consumer activism in the domain of labor exploitation: “ASI used the
right of the citizen to be informed about products s/he consumes to harness
her/his power as a consumer to change organizational practices” (McDonagh,
2002, p. 652). More recently, A. Smith and Johns (2020) have explored the
emergence and fragility of slave-free market categories through historical
research of antislavery consumer campaigns, while research from Carrington
and colleagues (2018) has examined the lack of action among consumers in
translating concern about modern slavery into purchasing through the various
neutralization techniques that they use to justify inaction. Much work remains
to be done.
There are, however, several important drawbacks that must be considered
in trying to apply marketing logics to coercive labor practices. Not dissimilar
to the problems facing other subdisciplines such as SCM, certification
schemes (upon which consumers may base their product choices) rely on the
availability of accurate information about product sourcing. Even for compa-
nies in legitimate industries, it may be impossible to guarantee slave-free
sourcing or to prevent underreporting of instances of labor exploitation (Yu,
2008). Given academic and media exposés of child and forced labor on certi-
fied worksites, recent studies have argued that ethical certification schemes
are an ineffective means of combating modern slavery (LeBaron, 2018,
2020). Moreover, it is well documented within the marketing literature that
consumers often overemphasize their ethical concerns when asked in sur-
veys, but fail to translate them into actual purchases (Crane, 2001; Devinney
et al., 2010). The morally charged term “modern slavery” is only likely to add
to this bias, making opinion polls showing consumer readiness to reward
slave-free products as highly suspect.3
In terms of possible deviations, then, there could be fruitful advances
made by exploring how consumers actually respond to “slave-free” or other
modern slavery–related claims, as well as their response to various rankings
and ratings of firms regarding their antislavery efforts (Isaac & Schindler,
2014). Ethnographic work from beyond marketing also points to the potential
for developing novel theoretical insights from consumer research on emerg-
ing forms of antislavery consumption, including human trafficking “reality
tours,” products made by former victims, and other ostensible “freedom mar-
kets” (Bernstein & Shih, 2014; Shih, 2017).
Another deviation for the marketing literature would be to move beyond
the possibilities of free consumers alleviating the unfree labor of others, to
look more closely at the unfree aspects of consumption engaged in by victims
Caruana et al. 267

of modern slavery. As Bone et al. (2014) have shown for marginalized groups
of consumers in financial markets, “Choosing loans is an involved consumer
choice journey, and encountering systemic, chronic, and uncontrollable
restrictions on choice at any level of the goal/choice hierarchy limits and
even prohibits minorities’ ability to make desired choices” (Bone et al., 2014,
p. 451). This research could be usefully extended into settings where there is
no real market (in the formal or legal sense) and where the coerced consump-
tion of goods and services becomes a key mechanism for extorting labor. We
know, for example, that the consumption of vital goods (e.g., food and hous-
ing) and services (e.g., loans and recruitment) can be used as a mode of
manipulation in the process of recruiting and locking-in labor through debt
bondage (Crane et al., 2018). And, while wider disciplines have observed
much about the lived experiences of victims (Howard, 2018), we know next
to nothing about the constraining (or liberatory) potential of consumption for
victims of modern slavery.

Research on Modern Slavery in Business in

Disciplines Beyond Business and Management
As our review of research on modern slavery in business in some of the main
business and management subdisciplines shows, there has been very limited
attention to date on the specific issue of modern slavery, even though in most
areas, there is a reasonable literature base that could be usefully drawn on to
develop some important and potentially quite novel insights. Going forward,
it will be important for business and management scholars to take inspiration
from, and build on, such research, rather than replicating it, or worse, ignor-
ing the important insights that have already been established. In the following
subsections, we therefore consider three key disciplines where modern slav-
ery and business has already, to various degrees, been addressed with a view
to identifying existing connections with business and management, likely
critiques of a business and management approach, and potential catalysts for
novel theoretical and empirical research contributions (see Table 2).

Law
In terms of connections, law scholarship has produced an important body of
literature that is of relevance to modern slavery and business. This begins
with basic questions of the appropriate definition of modern slavery, which
has been explored in some depth in the law literature. Allain (2009), for
example, has argued that contemporary interpretations of modern slavery in
international law should be predicated on the 1926 League of Nations
268
Table 2. Connections, Critiques, and Catalysts in Disciplines Beyond Business and Management.

Discipline Connections Critiques Catalysts

Law •• Definitions of modern slavery and •• Imprecision of definition •• Company and stock market responses
related terms in law and operationalization of to modern slavery legislation
•• Design and effectiveness of modern slavery in business •• Organizational drivers of modern
modern slavery legal interventions and management research slavery legislation
•• Lack of attention to
illegality of modern slavery
Political •• Social, economic, and political •• Uncritical adoption of •• Company-level determinants of
science determinants of worker modern slavery label modern slavery such as sourcing
vulnerability to modern slavery •• Inattention to broader patterns
•• Determinants of business demand structural dynamics of the •• Determinants of company-level
for modern slavery global economy changes in behavior with respect to
•• Effectiveness of private governance modern slavery
in tackling modern slavery •• Effect of industry structure on
•• Power, legitimacy, and compliance and certification initiatives
accountability of nonstate actors •• Effectiveness of CSR and due diligence
in governing modern slavery programs
History •• Economic analysis of slavery and •• A historical analysis of •• Exploration of continuities and
slavery markets modern slavery and discontinuities with past practices of
•• Dynamics of slavery-based misspecification of newness slavery in business
business models over time •• Overlooking of deeper •• Reevaluation of dichotomy between
•• Effectiveness of antislavery links of slavery to “traditional” and “new” forms of
solutions capitalism and colonialism slavery

CSR: corporate social responsibility.

Caruana et al. 269

definition of slavery as constituting an exercise of “any or all of the powers

attached to the right of ownership” over somebody. As he argues, this defini-
tion marks a shift from de jure slavery based on legal ownership to de facto
slavery based on practices of control over others without a formal legal title.
This provides the basis for considerable, and continued, debate about the
definition of modern forms of slavery in law and has formed the basis for
more recent elaborations, such as the Harvard–Bellagio guidelines on the
legal parameters of slavery (Allain, 2012, 2013).
As a distinct term, however, “modern slavery” has barely been incorpo-
rated into formal international law, and legal scholarship has tended to focus
on related terms such as human trafficking and forced labor. These have
been more extensively incorporated into legal and quasi-legal instruments
including the Palermo Protocol and the International Labour Office’s Forced
Labour Convention. As a result, a stream of legal analysis has explored the
different legal definitions of such contemporary forms of slavery, and the
intent and implications of their instantiation into specific legal instruments
in practice (Fuks, 2006; Mantouvalou, 2010; Rassam, 1998; Ryf, 2002;
Siller, 2016).
These contributions to our understanding of the legal definition of modern
slavery and related terms have provided important starting points for defini-
tions used by some business and management scholars (Crane, 2013; Stringer
et al., 2016). As a new topic in the management field, modern slavery typi-
cally requires at least a basic definition, and legal interpretations represent an
important starting place for distinguishing modern slavery from other, per-
haps more common or regular, forms of labor exploitation that have already
been explored in the literature such as human rights abuses and sweatshop
working conditions.
Other important connections have emerged from the stream of law litera-
ture concerned with the design and effectiveness of legal interventions.
Where these interventions concern business, then there is an obvious overlap
with management scholars interested in the response of companies to regula-
tory and other forms of institutional change around modern slavery. For
example, law scholars have usefully contextualized new TISC regulations in
the context of a broader shift to “reflexive” or “soft” law governing the con-
duct of global business and explored how business actors have helped shape
new laws around modern slavery (Chuang, 2015; LeBaron & Rühmkorf,
2017, 2019; Wen, 2016). In general, this research has identified serious defi-
ciencies in current approaches to the regulation of business in relation to
modern slavery (LeBaron & Rühmkorf, 2017, 2019; Mehra & Shay, 2016).
The main critiques that an understanding of legal scholarship would bring
to the typical business and management approaches to understanding modern
270 Business & Society 60(2)

slavery would concern the lack of precision regarding how modern slavery is
defined and operationalized empirically, and the lack of attention to illegality
in business scholarship. With respect to imprecision, there is the very real
danger that the careful and detailed work of legal scholars will be overlooked
or misrepresented by business and management scholars in the rush to engage
in theory building about an apparently “new” topic. According to legal analy-
sis, there are key distinctions between these more extreme forms and other,
more typical forms of labor exploitation (and indeed between different
extreme forms) that can easily be glossed over. In particular, as empirical
research on modern slavery increases, business and management scholars
need to be extremely mindful of how they operationalize carefully developed
legal definitions of slavery, forced labor, and human trafficking in the field.
Most examples of worker exploitation observed in the field, at least when
viewed in isolation, do not on their own meet the high bar of slavery or forced
labor and so need to be treated accordingly.
Turning to illegality, modern slavery is distinct from many other viola-
tions of labor standards, in that it is, almost everywhere, and in most forms,
an illegal practice, subject to criminal prosecution. So, although it will tend
to be tackled in business and management research through the lens of CSR,
multistakeholder initiatives, responsible sourcing, and other typical accouter-
ments of new governance, it is, in fact, also the subject of “hard” law. Business
and management scholar should therefore be cautious in framing modern
slavery in the context of social responsibilities “beyond” the law, and will
need to integrate their theories with appropriate legal analysis too.
Finally, with respect to catalysts, there are numerous ways that insights
from law and criminology could further inform business and management
research on modern slavery and vice versa but two are particularly worthy of
note. One important area for new research that is already underway, includ-
ing in this special section, concerns the business response to new legislation
in this area. While legal scholars are adept at analyzing degrees of compli-
ance and evaluating regulatory effectiveness, business and management
scholars can bring new insights based on analysis of firm-level determinants
of compliance as well as broader institutional-level influences, as has been
evident in the swathe of research exploring firm-level responses to environ-
mental, social, and corporate governance regulation and self-regulation
(Grosvold et al., 2016; King & Lenox, 2000). Likewise, accounting and
business communication researchers are well placed to reveal companies’
different communicative strategies in disclosing details of their modern
slavery programs, in the same way that they have explored sustainability
reporting and CSR communication more broadly (Cho et al., 2010; Crane
& Glozer, 2016; R. Hahn & Kühnen, 2013). A particularly revealing
Caruana et al. 271

intersection of law and business can be found in analysis of stock market

reactions to modern slavery “shocks” such as new legislation, scandals, and
other announcements (Cousins et al., 2020).
Another intriguing area of future research concerns the organizational
dynamics behind both the emergence of modern slavery legislation and orga-
nizational responses to it. While law scholars tend to analyze such develop-
ments at a macrolevel, business and management researchers are adept at
investigating the interorganizational and intraorganizational interactions
underlying these developments. In particular, closer attention to the lobbying
efforts of firms to precipitate, shape, or prevent legislation can inform exist-
ing legal analysis, while examinations of new organizational, market, and
legal categories framed around the label of “modern slavery” (Caruana et al.,
2018) can help explain better why particular interpretations of the law, and
the principles behind it, become institutionalized in particular organizational
contexts.

Political Science
Scholars within the discipline of political science have been exploring the
forms of severe labor exploitation encompassed within the term “modern
slavery” for over two decades. Connections between the business and man-
agement and political science literatures are abundant. The reasons for this no
doubt lie in the disciplines’ shared interest in the dynamics of global value/
supply chains. Moreover, this literature also includes contributions from the
burgeoning interdisciplinary literature focused on labor standards in global
value/supply chains, and global production networks, which cuts across eco-
nomic geography, development studies, sociology, and other social science
disciplines. We will focus on four key connections here.
In the first case, business scholars and political scientists share an interest
in the economic dynamics that create a supply of people vulnerable to forced
labor, and in what makes some people victims, but not others. Within the
political science literature, scholars have analyzed the links between forced
labor and globalization (Bales, 1999; Barrientos et al., 2013), poverty (Bales,
1999; Phillips, 2013; Phillips & Sakamoto, 2012), migration status (Elias,
2013; McGrath, 2013; Strauss, 2013), gender, race, and ethnic identity
(Barrientos, 2019; LeBaron & Gore, 2019; McGrath, 2013), and changing
patterns of social and labor protections (LeBaron & Ayers, 2013; LeBaron &
Phillips, 2019). These supply-side factors are captured by a typology pro-
posed by LeBaron et al. (2018).
Second, business scholars and political scientists are both interested in the
question of what creates business demand for forced labor in supply chains.
272 Business & Society 60(2)

Research within political science has investigated this question across several
sectors and parts of the world, analyzing how the demand for forced labor
within supply chains differs across geography, different types of companies,
destination markets, and sectors (Barrientos et al., 2013; LeBaron, 2018,
2019; McGrath, 2013; Phillips, 2013). They have also investigated how the
presence of certain types of organizations, such as labor contractors, within
supply chains affects upon forced labor (Barrientos, 2013).
Third, political scientists share business and management scholars’
interest in the effectiveness of private voluntary CSR initiatives as gover-
nance strategies to address forced labor. Political science research has
investigated the effectiveness of transparency or “home state” legislation in
driving changes in corporate policy around modern slavery (LeBaron &
Rühmkorf, 2017, 2019; Phillips et al., 2018). It has also investigated the
effectiveness of CSR programs such as codes of conduct, social auditing,
and ethical certification in raising labor standards and addressing and pre-
venting forced labor (LeBaron, 2018; LeBaron & Phillips, 2019; Locke,
2013; Locke et al., 2012).
Fourth, like business scholars, political scientists are interested in the
power, legitimacy, and accountability of nonstate actors—including industry
actors and civil society organizations—within the modern slavery gover-
nance arena. This strand of research includes analysis of the politics and
power of antislavery and antitrafficking NGOs (Bunting & Quirk, 2017;
O’Connell Davidson, 2015), corporations and industry associations
(LeBaron & Rühmkorf, 2017), multistakeholder initiatives (Fransen, 2012),
and auditing and accounting firms, including the Big 4 (Fransen & LeBaron,
2019).
There are two key critiques of business and management approaches that
come from the political science literature. First, the very term “modern slav-
ery” tends to be adopted and used uncritically in the management literature.
However, in political science and other social science disciplines, there is
considerable contestation about the label. Scholars have argued that it fails to
accurately capture the nature of the problem (O’Connell Davidson, 2015),
the agency often exhibited by workers entering into coercive labor relations
(LeBaron, 2018; LeBaron et al., 2018), and the continuities between so-
called “free” and “unfree” labor (Strauss, 2013).
Second, business scholars tend to focus only on dynamics inside corpora-
tions, but rarely go beyond firm-level analysis. As such, they potentially miss
a lot of relevant explanations and can have a superficial understanding of the
mesolevel and macrolevel causes of forced labor in the global economy.
Because their unit of analysis tends to be either individual companies or indi-
vidual workers, they often miss the structural political, economic, and social
Caruana et al. 273

dynamics that shape the global economy within which these individual com-
panies and people exist and act.
Turning finally to catalysts, it is evident that because political scientists
are focused on the global political economy and international relations in
broad terms, they tend not to have an understanding of the nitty-gritty details
of how businesses actually function. New research could usefully expand the
discipline’s existing strand of research on forced labor in global supply
chains, leveraging business knowledge, data, and expertise on questions
including the following: What drives changes in sourcing patterns within a
company? What leads to changes in corporate behavior with respect to mod-
ern slavery? How are ethical certification, social auditing, or other compli-
ance programs changing in the face of corporate monopolization and
concentration? How effective are various CSR and due diligence programs in
detecting and addressing forced labor in supply chains? More granular under-
standings of business and corporations would complement political scien-
tists’ existing coverage of private and public policy initiatives, such as the
factors that shape the prevalence of labor exploitation and the role of states
and national governments in facilitating or eradicating forced labor.

History
Historians have long studied the business of slavery. There are several litera-
tures within history that should be of keen interest to business scholars,
including those on the multinational business dynamics of the transatlantic
slave trade (Davis, 1998; Eltis & Richardson, 2015), the economic history of
slavery (Fogel & Engerman, 1980), the role and value of slavery in the eco-
nomic development of capitalism (Baptist, 2016; Beckert, 2015; Johnson,
2013), labor organizing, fair trade, and boycott movements as solutions to
slavery (Pawel, 2010; Peck, 2000), and on how various forms of unfree
labor, and gender and racial difference persisted in the face of the formal
abolition of slavery (Blight & Downs, 2017; Glenn, 2004). Thus, many top-
ics that are currently being investigated, or could be explored, in relation to
the contemporary business of modern slavery have been analyzed by histo-
rians in relation to earlier systems of slavery. We will focus on three key
connections here.
First, just as contemporary business scholars are interested in the econom-
ics, financial, and commercial dynamics of slavery, historians have studied
the economics of slavery in various eras of the global economy and across
different models of national economic development (Eltis & Richardson,
2015; Fogel & Engerman, 1980; Schermerhorn, 2015; Williams, 1944).
Historians have analyzed the economic efficiency of slavery (Rioux et al.,
274 Business & Society 60(2)

2019), the profitability and productivity of slave labor compared with wage
labor (Genovese, 1989; Tomich, 2017), and the role and value of slavery in
creating and facilitating markets and trade in commodities, such as cotton
and sugar (Baptist, 2016; Beckert, 2015; Johnson, 2013). They have mapped
in impressive empirical detail how various slave markets—as well as con-
nected industries like shipping and insurance—functioned and evolved
(Davis, 1998; Eltis & Richardson, 2015).
Second, paralleling business scholars’ interest in the business models of
modern slavery, historians have examined how slavery-based business mod-
els have changed as laws, social norms, dynamics of credit and payments,
and international trade evolved. Historians have chronicled this in relation to
single sectors, like cotton (Beckert, 2015; Johnson, 2013), as well as across
various jurisdictions (Baptist, 2016; Foner, 2002; Johnson, 2013;
Schermerhorn, 2015). This has included the motivations of those exploiting
slaves. Davis (1966), for instance, has examined how business actors within
the northern American colonies balanced their demand for cheap labor along-
side their commitments to racial equality, and how this changed over time.
Third, historians share business scholars’ interest in the effectiveness of
activist, worker, and industry-led solutions to slavery in global supply chains.
Historians have documented antislavery activists’ use of boycotts and fair
trade movements to put commercial pressure on businesses that use slavery,
as a strategy to eradicate it from supply chains (Bardacke, 2012; Garcia,
2014; Pawel, 2010). They have debated the politics and trade-offs between
worker and slave-led activism and organizing, and the abolitionist move-
ments pioneered by civil society and religious movements (Blight & Downs,
2017; Davis, 1966; Swanson & Stewart, 2018).
Turning then to critiques, the disciplinary lens offered by historians elu-
cidates that many of the dynamics that business scholars think are new are
in fact very old. Long and complex global labor supply chains; organiza-
tions configured to profit from illegal labor practices; labor contractors
profiting from indebtedness; and labor market intermediaries who help to
source, control, and profit from forced labor—these are just a few of the
dimensions of the business of slavery that are often presumed to be modern,
but historians would say are in fact very old practices. Similarly, historians
urge us to ask big questions about the historic links between capitalism,
colonialism, and slavery, and challenge us to consider why—when global
capitalism has never existed without slavery—it could be eradicated in the
present day. Business and management scholars tend to overlook such
broader connections.
Finally, there are several promising veins of new research that could be
catalysts for linking research in business and management studies with
Caruana et al. 275

historical work. A key part of new research is accurately understanding how

we got here, and whether contemporary dynamics of modern slavery are sim-
ply a continuation and maturation of early iterations of capitalism and corpo-
rations documented by historians. Another key task for researchers is asking,
“how new is this really?” about several of the business dynamics that are
widely considered exclusive to modern slavery. In so doing, there is a need
for scholars to reevaluate the dichotomy and binary that is often posited
between “traditional” and “new” forms of slavery—does this hold up, once
the history of various forms of slavery are better understood?

Conclusion
Taken together, our analysis suggests five key observations. First, it is clear
that attention to the topic of modern slavery in business and management
research is emerging but does not as yet constitute a meaningful body of
research. Across the range of subdisciplines, the state of business and man-
agement research is severely limited, effectively representing as we indicated
in the introduction a “non-field.” This is not because the business and man-
agement subdisciplines fundamentally lack the right conceptual building
blocks—and indeed we have shown that there are numerous opportunities for
novel theory building and empirical work—but that modern slavery has
largely been overlooked due to prevailing norms and approaches in each sub-
discipline. Business and management scholars could usefully look to the
broader disciplines of law, politics, and history (as well as others) for stimu-
lus in developing a more concerted—and indeed impactful—program of
research on the topic.
Second, then, we would advocate for business and management scholars
to embrace, where possible, interdisciplinary research in addressing issues
of modern slavery. Other disciplines have clearly taken more of a lead in
investigating the phenomenon to date, but business scholars should be well
positioned to unpack the individual- and organizational-level business
dynamics and address important gaps in our current understanding.
Interdisciplinary research is difficult and risky, but its value in tackling com-
plex business and society issues such as modern slavery is clear (de Bakker
et al., 2019).
Third, we offer a cautionary note about the distinctiveness of modern slav-
ery. There appear to be two separate tendencies likely to emerge in the busi-
ness and management literature: either scholars will treat modern slavery as
equivalent to other social issues and so will simply apply the usual disciplin-
ary tools to investigate it without accounting for any critical differences, or
they might overemphasize the uniqueness of modern slavery and thereby
276 Business & Society 60(2)

ignore all the insights we already have in the field about dealing with poor
working conditions, human rights abuses, and supply chain irresponsibility.
Going forward, researchers will have to carefully navigate this issue of dis-
tinctiveness to build better theory. Attention to legal definitions, the politics
of different labels, and (dis)continuities with historical forms of exploitation
is clearly part of the solution. Moreover, business and management research-
ers can also chart a new course in reconciling these tensions by considering
the types of business models and management practices that make particular
forms or degrees of exploitation more or less likely—or even coexist—rather
than seeking to make absolute distinctions. The exploration of modern slav-
ery as an isolated and anomalous issue—rather than as a phenomenon that
gives us crucial insights into a range of contemporary business dynamics—is,
we believe, a key reason that the literature remains so underdeveloped. So
long as modern slavery is thought to require special lenses to understand, in
isolation from the broader theoretical and empirical research toolkit available
to business scholars, it will fail to benefit from the discipline’s key insights
and strength of inquiry.
Fourth, our analysis has suggested a wealth of important new pathways for
further theoretical and empirical development on the subject of modern slav-
ery and business. The field is replete with research opportunities. In light of
the distortion of typical assumptions about economic exchanges brought by
modern slavery (e.g., that actors have agency in entering such exchanges and
freedom to exit them; that value chains relate to products not labor; that eco-
nomic actors have formal, legal status, etc.), future scholarship will need to
be both creative and forward-looking, but also mindful of what has already
been achieved. We are at an important moment that provides an opportunity
to reflect on the efficacy of existing business and management theory and to
revise or extend our theoretical resources to achieve greater explanatory
power.
Fifth and finally, part of the challenge of making important new contribu-
tions on modern slavery and business relates to the difficulties of conducting
empirical research on this topic. Business and management researchers
would do well here to note some of the challenges previously identified sur-
rounding different aspects of research design and execution in this respect.
This includes issues of measurement, definition, bias, and ethics (LeBaron,
2019) not to mention the personal safety of the researcher (Stringer &
Simmons, 2015), and of course, difficulties in accessing appropriate data
about business and modern slavery (LeBaron & Crane, 2019; Rühmkorf,
2019). However, if the discipline of business and management is going to
address the sad and sorry state of its nonfield of modern slavery, researchers
will need to engage in bold and creative solutions.
Caruana et al. 277

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article.

Notes
1. The B-Team is a global nonprofit initiative of leaders from business and civil
society that seeks to create “new norms of corporate leadership that can build a
better world” (http://bteam.org). Paul Polman quote is from https://bteam.org/
our-thinking/reports/modern-slavery-ceos
2. For the British Accounting Review special issue, see https://www.journals.
elsevier.com/the-british-accounting-review/call-for-papers/special-issue-mod-
ern-slavery-and-the-accounting-profession. For the Accounting, Auditing and
Accountability Journal special issue call for papers, see https://rogerburritt.word-
press.com/2019/06/15/accounting-for-modern-slavery-employees-and-work-
conditions-in-business-aaaj-special-issue-papers-due-30-november-2019/
3. For example, a 2014 poll of U.S. consumers by the Walk Free Foundation found
that more than 50% of consumers claimed that they would pay more for slave-
free products and that two thirds of consumers claimed that they would switch
brands to avoid products with slavery in the supply chain. See https://cdn.mind-
eroo.com.au/content/uploads/2019/05/09164229/Slavery-Alert-Consumer-Poll-
United-States.pdf

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Author Biographies
Robert Caruana (PhD, University of Nottingham, UK) is a professor of business
ethics and director of the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility at
Nottingham University Business School, UK. His research focuses on corporate and
consumer responsibility, responsible tourism, corporate communications, discourse
analysis, and more recently business and modern slavery. He has published in jour-
nals such as the Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Marketing
Theory, and Organization Studies.
Andrew Crane (PhD, University of Nottingham, UK) is a professor of business and
society and director of the Center for Business, Organizations and Society at the
School of Management, University of Bath, UK. He is a former coeditor of Business
& Society. His research deals, among other things, with corporate responsibility, busi-
ness ethics, cross-sector partnerships, responsible consumption, and business and
modern slavery. He has published in journals such as Academy of Management
Review, Business & Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Management
Studies, Organization Studies, and Regulation & Governance.
Caruana et al. 287

Stefan Gold (PhD, University of Kassel, Germany) is a professor and holder of the
Chair for Sustainability Management at the University of Kassel. His research inter-
ests comprise sustainability management, sustainable supply chain and operations
management, and corporate accountability. He has published in such journals as
Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal
of Business Ethics, Journal of Industrial Ecology, and Journal of International
Business Studies.
Genevieve LeBaron (PhD, York University, Canada) is a professor of politics and
codirector of Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) at the University
of Sheffield, UK. Her research investigates the political economy of forced labor and
effectiveness of initiatives to combat it, corporate social responsibility, and labor stan-
dards, among other topics. She has published in journals such as Journal of Development
Studies, New Political Economy, Regulation & Governance, Review of International
Political Economy, Review of International Studies, and Socio-Economic Review. She
has written and edited books published by Polity, Oxford University Press, and
Cambridge University Press.