Organisational responses to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation: a failure of experimentalist governance?

Rogerson, Michael; Crane, Andrew; Soundararajan, Vivek; Grosvold, Johanne; Cho, Charles H.

doi:10.1108/aaaj-12-2019-4297

Cited by 49 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(119 reference statements)

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“…Major disasters, such as the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 that killed more than 1100 workers in factories in Bangladesh that produced garments for western retailers, are indicative of weak moral and ethical standards applied by global retailers in their supply chains (Islam et al, 2021). This has led to new forms of regulation (such as the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015; the US Dodd-Frank Act's conflict mineral reporting rules, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, and the Australian Modern Slavery Act of 2018) that attracted significant academic and social activist attention (Roshitsh, 2021;Sobik, 2020;Rogerson et al, 2020;Hansard, 2019;LeBaron & Rühmkorf, 2019;Blitz & Simic, 2019;Stevenson & Cole, 2018;Christ & Burritt, 2018;Birkey et al, 2018;Islam & Van Staden, 2018;The Guardian, 2015;New, 2015;Crane, 2013;Gold et al, 2015). In relation to the UK Modern Slavery Act, while the Act is heralded to create transparency in relation to factory working conditions within global supply chains, there are concerns among academics and anti-slavery activists about the Act's limitations and resulting effectiveness (The Guardian, 2015;Hansard, 2019;LeBaron & Rühmkorf, 2019;Stevenson & Cole, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Islam

2021

J Bus Ethics

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The purpose of this article is to problematise a particular social transparency and disclosure regulation in the UK, that transcend national boundaries in order to control (modern) slavery in supply chains operating in the developing world. Drawing on notions from the regulatory and sociology literature, i.e. transparency and normativity, and by interviewing anti-slavery activists and experts, this study explores the limitations of the disclosure and transparency requirements of the UK Modern Slavery Act and, more specifically, how anti-slavery activists experience and interpret the new regulations and the regulators’ implementation of the regulation. This research found limited confidence among anti-slavery activists regarding the Act’s call for transparency in relation to the elimination of slavery from global supply chains. The research also found that the limits of the transparency provisions within the Act appear to hinder the attainment of normativity. This study provides new and unique insights into the critical role that social activists play in exposing the lack of corporate transparency and failures of responsibility to protect workers within global supply chains.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Islam

2021

J Bus Ethics

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“…The complexities associated with violent contexts also demand researchers attain deep contextual knowledge of their research settings (Gümüşay and Amis, 2020). For instance, the increasing privatization of war, the fusing of war-making and "development" agendas, and rediscovery that slavery is deeply embedded within global supply chains all reflect neo-colonial forms of business and trade predicated on dispossession, exploitation and extraction (Banerjee, 2011;Duffield, 2001;Rogerson et al, 2020). These place contemporary forms of violence within a long history of exploitation and erasure that began with colonization and slavery, and later advanced through "the civilizing mission of the secularized modernity" under pretenses of "development and modernization" (Mignolo, 2000: 22).…”

Section: Violent Contexts and The Façade Of Neutralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Researching violent contexts: A call for political reflexivity

Abdelnour

Moghli

2021

Organization

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Violent contexts are not “normal” research settings; they involve abuses, power disparities, and collective histories of violence that researchers should be alert to. Being unreflexive to these risks can cause harm in the form of objectifying people and context, normalizing violence, or silencing voices. Political reflexivity can equip researchers to better identify, understand and mitigate these harms, and where possible, challenge structures that do the marginalizing. We articulate political reflexivity through feminist standpoint theory, which asks researchers to critically examine their positionality and privilege in relation to the geopolitics of the research setting, epistemic privilege of marginalized participants, and political implications of their work. Practicing political reflexivity can help researchers situate their work along a “decoloniality continuum,” which includes research complicit with the maintenance of violence, a hybridity approach that aims to understand and challenge the (colonial) underpinnings of violence by centering marginalized knowledge, and research that seeks reparation or liberation, meaning redress and radical equality for marginalized peoples, ideas and histories. We conclude with a call for researchers to identify methods and paths to strengthen our understanding of political reflexivity, and to support efforts to decolonize knowledge.

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“…Apart from the introductory paper on modern slavery, one paper has a focus on disclosure and accountability for modern slavery in higher education. Although, as Section 4 indicates, modern slavery hot spots are evident in a number of primary and secondary industries, little emphasis has been placed on tertiary industries such as modern slavery and higher education and the paper of Rogerson et al (2020) and its discoveries represent a first.…”

Section: Accounting Research Into Work Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The efficacy of modern legislation as a state governance mechanism, designed to encourage entities to change their behaviour towards and report on their actions to reduce modern slavery in supply chains, has been challenged but systematic evidence is not yet available. Rogerson et al (2020) start down the road to make up for this. They examine whether the continuous improvement-based experimentalist governance, which accepts competition between entities, drives high levels of disclosure and accountability.…”

Section: Accounting Research Into Work Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are identified and provide the substance of specific research papers in this Special Issue, which will be introduced individually at the end of this paper. The gaps filled relate to disclosure and accountability (Rogerson et al , 2020), supply chain reporting boundaries (Antonini et al , 2020), supply chain audit (Siddiqui et al , 2020), health and safety management control (Passetti et al , 2020), and accounting for emancipation from wage theft (Yang et al , 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accounting for work conditions from modern slavery to decent work

Christ

Burritt

Schaltegger

2020

AAAJ

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PurposeWith the initial focus on the extreme end of the work conditions continuum where, in the last decade, legislation has been introduced to combat illegal and illegitimate practices, this issue's lead paper provides an overview on key topics of extreme work conditions of modern slavery and accounting. The paper introduces the Special Issue on “Accounting for modern slavery, employees and work conditions in business” and its selected papers.Design/methodology/approachThe method adopted is a wide-ranging literature review exploring the continuum of work conditions and their relationship to accounting, especially extreme exploitation of workers through modern slavery.FindingsEmployment and workplace conditions and practices in business can be viewed as a continuum ranging from the illegal and illegitimate practices of modern slavery, through unethical and often illegal practices such as wages theft, to decent work. Given this continuum, in this Special Issue avenues are identified for accounting research to provide an account of the effectiveness of actions taken to eliminate modern slavery and overcome grey areas of work conditions.Practical implicationsThe paper helps to create an improved understanding of different types of exploitation in work conditions in different industries and the role accounting might play in research and practice.Social implicationsSlavery did not end with abolition in the 19th century. Instead, it changed its forms and continues to harm people in every country in the world especially in certain industries, of which several are discussed and accounting advice proffered. Likewise, as reflected in Special Issue papers, the role of accounting in reducing less extreme forms of poor work conditions is also considered.Originality/valueThe paper provides an overview of different forms and degrees of exploitation in work conditions and identifies the need for and areas of accounting research in this emerging area.

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Organisational responses to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation: a failure of experimentalist governance?

Cited by 49 publications

References 86 publications

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Modern Slavery Disclosure Regulation and Global Supply Chains: Insights from Stakeholder Narratives on the UK Modern Slavery Act

Researching violent contexts: A call for political reflexivity

Accounting for work conditions from modern slavery to decent work

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