Modern Slavery in Business: The Sad and Sorry State of a Non-Field

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.

Automated summary

Research on modern slavery in the business and management field is still underdeveloped and has potential for further growth. Scholars should focus on the current status, potential drawbacks, and future directions of modern slavery research in order to build towards a more substantial subfield of study.