Supply Chain Governance and Modern Slavery

 

Rights Lab project lead: Alex Trautrims. In collaboration with the Workforce Disclosure Initiative
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Duration:  April – September 2022
Programme: Business and Economies

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of corporate action tackling modern slavery, many organisations still fail to prioritise, or act on, modern slavery risks. This project addresses knowledge gaps concerning the relationship between companies’ understandings of their supply chains, and the effectiveness of actions taken to address modern slavery. Despite the risk of modern slavery in industrials companies’ supply chain and the need for governance mechanisms that can address multitiered supplier relationships, these companies tend to have lower levels of understanding of their suppliers and the action they are taking on modern slavery, as evidenced by having some of the least comprehensive supply chain data in the Workforce Disclosure Initiative’s (WDI) 2020 survey of companies workforce practices. By conducting a comparison between industrials and utilities companies, which generally have a much more comprehensive understanding, the project will both rectify a knowledge gap on how modern slavery manifests as a result of these companies’ practices, as well as providing the opportunity for cross-sectoral learnings. The project usse the unique dataset collected through the WDI’s annual survey of companies’ workforce practices in combination with focus groups with companies and business responsibility supporting organisations to identify the range of understandings in UK companies of effective supply chain governance.