Slavery and Its Links to Organizations

Abstract

This chapter introduces researchers and practitioners to the issue of slavery and its links to organizations. It starts by presenting an overview of how slavery has been defined and studied in management and organizational research, as well as the broader social sciences and humanities. It then presents a simple model of slavery and its links to organizations that is designed to help researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and members of society attain a basic understanding of how slavery is linked to organizations today. From there it discusses the implications of slavery and the model in light of the prior research on slavery, this book's focus on violence and abuse in the workplace, and where we need to go next in order to address the issue of slavery.

Full text

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Slavery and its links to organizations
Kam Phung
Abstract
This chapter introduces researchers and practitioners to the issue of slavery and its links to
organizations. It starts by presenting an overview of how slavery has been defined and
studied in management and organizational research, as well as the broader social sciences
and humanities. It then presents a simple model of slavery and its links to organizations
that is designed to help researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and members of society
attain a basic understanding of how slavery is linked to organizations today. From there it
discusses the implications of slavery and the model in light of the prior research on slavery,
this book’s focus on violence and abuse in the workplace, and where we need to go next in
order to address the issue of slavery.
Introduction
The recognition that slavery is not only a phenomenon of the past, but also continues to exist
beyond the cases of just a few bad apples, is gradually coming to fruition in society. For decades,
scholars from the greater social sciences and humanities (e.g., sociology, human geography,
international affairs, international law, public policy, economics) have engaged in theoretical and
empirical examinations of slavery in many of its contemporary forms around the world to
contribute to our understanding of the horrendous issue that is “routinely dismissed as an historical
artifact” (Quirk, 2006: 565). However, slavery, both historical and contemporary, has received
substantially less attention in management and organizational research, with exceptions of a few
theoretical and conversational articles (Cooke, 2003; Crane, 2013; Gold, Trautrims, & Trodd,
2015; New, 2015; Stringer & Simmons, 2015), as well as books and book chapters (Crane &
LeBaron, Forthcoming; Kara, 2010; Phung & Crane, Forthcoming). In this chapter, I attempt to
Phung, K. 2018. Slavery and its links to organizations. In R. Burke & C. L. Cooper (Eds.),
Violence and abuse in and around organisations: 273–291. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

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bring clarity to the issue of slavery by drawing on extant literature to address the question: How is
slavery linked to organizations in modern society? In answering my question, I contribute to
broadening the list of issues related to violence and abuse in the workplace to include one of the
most formidable in society that has somehow slipped under the radar amongst management and
organizational researchers, despite its clear links to business.
Research on slavery that illuminates its links to organizations, albeit not explicitly, has
continued to emerge in increasing numbers since around the turn of the millennium, starting with
the work of Bales (2000) which “has brought attention to the issue and influenced subsequent
academic and policy work” (McGrath, 2013: 33), despite generating criticism (e.g., O’Connell
Davidson, 2010; Quirk, 2006). While substantial debate still surrounds the conceptualization of
slavery as a scholarly topic, with different scholars embracing different definitions and criteria on
what constitutes slavery, there is little questioning that slavery can and does exist in the workplace
and the context of business in both developed and developing countries. Despite the illegality of
slavery in international law and it being a universally condemned practice, according to the
International Labour Organization (ILO), approximately 20.9 million people are enslaved
globally, “trapped in jobs into which they were coerced or deceived and which they cannot leave,”
with “18.7 million (90 percent) [being] exploited in the private economy, by individuals or
enterprises” (ILO, 2012: 1). It is further estimated that US$150.2 billion in illegal profits are
generated annually from the use of slavery (ILO, 2014). As surprising as they are, these figures
may be conservative, as the Global Slavery Index (2016) estimates that 45.8 million people are in
some form of slavery.
In this chapter, I begin by briefly reviewing how scholars have defined slavery in
management and organizational research, as well as broader influential works, and specifying how

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I view slavery in this chapter. Next, I present a simple model of slavery and its links to
organizations that is designed to help researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and members of
society attain a basic understanding of how slavery is linked to organizations today. Notably, in
presenting my model, I draw on the extant literature to give readers a clear understanding of how
slavery exists in the real world as supported by empirical research. Next, I discuss the implications
of my model in light of the prior research on slavery, this book’s focus on violence and abuse in
the workplace, and where we need to go next in order to address the issue of slavery. Ultimately,
I suggest that to address slavery, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and members of society
need to sensitize themselves to the various ways that slavery is linked to organizations in isolation
as well as within the global economy and supply chains.
Slavery in modern society
What is slavery in modern society? First and foremost, like most phenomenon, slavery has
emerged in society as a loosely defined term with multiple associations. One the one hand, Allain
(2009) highlights that the definition of slavery is often misinterpreted, with followers of the anti-
slavery movement embracing an interpretation of slavery that has “channeled the understanding
of slavery away from its legal definition towards one which, unintentionally, has done a disservice
to their cause” (241). On the other hand, several scholars point out that it is often difficult to
pinpoint a precise definition of slavery because the term “slavery,” through multiple interpretations
and applications in the media, industry, and legal frameworks, has come to be associated with
“slavery-like practices” (see Allain, 2012: 210), a “politically sensitive rubric of slavery” (Crane,
2013: 50), and terms such as forced labor and human trafficking, among others (Kara, 2011). At
the same time, as New (2015) notes, slavery is sometimes rolled “together with general concerns
about working conditions, or indeed with the idea of all workers in industrial capitalism as being

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‘wage slaves’” (698). As the following passage indicates, this loose application of the term slavery
has created much confusion and controversy:
This, my friends, is the crux of the matter: if we do not know what slavery is then we cannot
make a valid determination as to who is in and who is out; what practice is slavery and
what is—to be facetious—mere severe exploitation: Is forced labour slavery? Is debt
bondage slavery? Child soldiering? Forced marriage?
(Allain, 2012: 1)
Meanwhile, amongst the few articles on slavery in management and organizational research
(e.g., Crane, 2013; Gold et al., 2015), as well as the broader research on slavery (e.g., Allain, 2015;
Allain & Bales, 2012; Quirk, 2006), it has been recognized that slavery as a scholarly phenomenon
has also struggled to gain conceptual and definitional clarity and remains in contested territories,
though progress have been made. While management and organizational researchers have turned
to an array of international organizations, conventions, and legal frameworks for their definitions,
the Bellagio–Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery (see Allain, 2012), as cited
by Gold et al. (2015), offers a robust definition of slavery as per international law. Endorsed by
the Members of the Research Network of the Legal Parameters of Slavery, the Bellagio–Harvard
Guidelines were created to set a gold standard that best represents the reality of slavery and to
guide future research on contemporary slavery to avoid conflicting understandings of the
phenomenon. According to these guidelines, the definition of slavery as per international law is
set forth by “Article 1(1) of the 1926 Slavery Convention, which reads: ‘Slavery is the status or
condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are
exercised’” (Allain, 2012: 375). Crucially, it is specified that in determining if slavery exists, the

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exercising of powers attaching to the right of ownership as define below “shall provide evidence
of slavery, insofar as they demonstrate control over a person tantamount to possession” (378).
In cases of slavery, the exercise of ‘the powers attaching to the right of ownership’ should
be understood as constituting control over a person in such a way as to significantly deprive
that person of his or her individual liberty, with the intent of exploitation through the use,
management, profit, transfer or disposal of that person. Usually this exercise will be
supported by and obtained through means such as violent force, deception and/or coercion.
(Allain, 2012: 376)
With the importance of the Bellagio–Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery
in mind and the hopes of stimulating rigorous research on slavery in management and
organizational research, in this chapter, I embrace the definition of slavery as set forth by Crane
(2013: 51) as it encapsulates the essence of the Bellagio–Harvard Guidelines and is also specific
to the workplace. Thus, slavery in the workplace, which, for this paper, excludes situations such
as forced marriage, child soldiers, and prison labor, entails five conditions. As Crane suggests,
people under slavery are (1) forced to work through threat; (2) owned or controlled by an
“employer,” typically through mental, physical, or threatened abuse; (3) dehumanized and treated
as a commodity; (4) physically constrained or restricted in freedom of movement; and (5) subject
to economic exploitation through underpayment. Importantly, “[a]ll of these conditions must be
present for an arrangement to be considered representative of modern slavery, but they involve
degrees of variability (i.e., they are not strictly categorical)” (Crane, 2013: 51). That said—it is
crucial to recognize that slavery does not exist in one single form and appears to be emerging in
new form around the world (Bales, 2005).

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Links to organizations: Looking beyond the familiar
How is slavery linked to organizations in modern society? Given that approximately 90
percent of slavery takes place in the private economy, benefiting private individuals and
enterprises (ILO, 2014), there is no questioning that slavery is linked to organizations, formal and
informal. At the same time, how can it be that slavery has been documented in virtually all
countries around world including notable cases in India, Pakistan, Thailand, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Mauritania, Brazil, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, but continues to slip under the radar in research and practice as a critical business and
ethical issue that organizations face? The extant literature suggests that three factors have
contributed to a lack of awareness and knowledge on how slavery is not merely linked to
organizations, but takes place in them too.
First, slavery often remains hidden as it is “not always easy to recognize” due to the relational
aspect of it and its varying forms (Bales, 2005: 8) and its “lack of observability” (Crane, 2013:
54), often taking place “in the informal economy, in remote or hidden locations in developing and
industrialized countries alike” (Plant, 2007: 7). Second, while some have argued that the “ugliness
and guilt” associated with historical slavery and its ties to management (Hayek, Novicevic,
Humphreys, & Jones, 2010: 367–368) has led to “the denial of slavery in management studies”
(Cooke, 2003), others suggest that this denial also perpetuates with modern slavery (Crane, 2013).
Indeed, as Kara (2010) notes, the truths surrounding slavery today may be “unpalatable” (ix).
Lastly, there is a distinct lack of research that contributes to our understanding of organizations
involved in slavery, directly or indirectly (Crane, 2013; Phung & Crane, Forthcoming), as most
research focuses on victims of slavery (Laczko, 2005).

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Figure 4.1.1. Slavery and its links to organizations
While these three factors of slavery (its hidden nature, denial in management studies, and
lack of research on organizations) that I have outlined have created challenges in understanding
the links between slavery and organizations in modern society, in the remainder of this section, I
bring clarity to the field by offering a simple model that illustrates where slavery may emerge
within organizations in society. However, as the simple model in Figure 4.1.1 suggests, although
the use of slave labor may exist in downstream organizations that members of society interacts
with more regularly, research suggests that it is more so the case that slave labor will be used in
upstream organizations, as well as intermediaries (labor providers), that are more distanced from
members of society. Within this model, whereas as the main figures represent the different types
of organizations that I distinguish (downstream organizations, upstream organizations, and labor
providers), the lines represent the relationships between them. Importantly, the shaded figures
denote the types of organizations in which slavery is more commonly takes place in the workplace.

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At the same time, while the solid lines represent relationships surrounding the provision of goods,
the dotted lines represent relationships surrounding the provision of labor.
Downstream organizations
There is no shortage of media coverage and accounts of serious cases of human exploitation
in large multinational organizations downstream that members of society interact with regularly,
such as a case which involved foreign workers from Belize in Edmonton, Alberta, who “accus[ed]
McDonald’s Canada of treating them like ‘slave,’ by effectively forcing them to share an expensive
apartment – then deducting almost half their take-home pay as rent” (Tomlinson, 2014). While
these cases are serious and surely deserve attention, they often do not meet the criteria of slavery.
Instead, as Crane (2013) highlights based on an extensive review of empirical research, slavery is
“more likely to be associated with small-scale businesses with limited potential for capturing
value” and “where labor intensity is high” (54).
In terms of downstream organizations, evidence indicates that highly exploitative labor
practices, including slavery, are more likely to occur in small organizations operating in restaurants
and catering services, as well as domestic and care work (e.g., cleaning services, nanny services,
nail salons) (Allain, Crane, LeBaron, & Behbahani, 2013; Andrees, 2008), and what many refer to
as “dirty work” (see Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). Cases that have surfaced have also involved
routine hospitality service such as hotel housekeeping (e.g., Kelly & McNamara, 2016). For
instance, the ILO has found numerous cases of slavery from the above industries in Germany,
France, Hungary, Portugal, and Russia in which slaves are trapped through coercion methods such
as deception, moral and physical violence, threats, debt bondage, wage withholding, confinement,
retention of identity and personal documents, and/or blackmail (Andrees, 2008). Crucially, nearly
all of the cases, as well as cases from other studies, involved the exploitation of vulnerable migrant

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workers in downstream organizations, such an enslaved dishwasher in a restaurant in the United
Kingdom (e.g., Allain et al., 2013).
At the same time, perhaps one of the better documented industries in research on slavery is
the global sex trafficking industry (see Kara, 2010). As Kara (2011) note, “[i]n cases of commercial
sex, exploitation involves multiple counts of coerced sex acts every day in physical confinements
and under threats of harm to the slave or their loved ones back home” (69). Indeed, “crimes of
enslavement and sexual slavery are now international crimes for which an individual can stand
trial before the International Criminal Court” (Allain, 2009: 240); however, one should not confuse
sexual slavery with general prostitution, legal or illegal, as the exercising of power as per slavery
is not necessarily present. As Kara (2010) explains in the passage below, the anatomy of sex
trafficking is a complex business enterprise that includes supply and demand.
All sex trafficking crimes have two components: slave trading and slavery. Slave trading
represents the supply side of the sex trafficking industry. Slavery represents the demand
side. Within these two components, there are three steps: acquisition, movement, and
exploitation. The interrelationship among these elements reveals the anatomy of sex
trafficking.
(Kara, 2010: 5)
While commercial sex trafficking certainly exists in developed countries, including the
United States (e.g., Patterson, 2016), it has predominantly been documented in scholarly research
focused on developing countries such as India and Thailand where sex trafficking is known to
thrive (e.g., Bales, 2000; Kara, 2010). As Crane (2013) notes, in some cases, sexual and domestic
enslavement may arise when the enslaved workers are physically “isolated from the outside world”
such as with “slavery camps in remote rural or mining areas” as it may become institutionalized

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within a localized context; however, it is also broadly theorized that sex slavery is tied to cultural
contexts (i.e., traditions, entrenched inequalities, and religion) (e.g., Bales, 2000; Kara, 2010) (56).
Overall, as I have explained in this section, slavery can and does exist in downstream
organizations. However, in most cases it does not occur in large multinational organizations that
tend to be the focus of management and organizational research. Instead, slavery is often associated
with small-scale labor intensive organizations. That said, as I explain in the next section, this does
not mean that large multinational organizations have no links to slavery.
Upstream organizations
Stories of large multinational organizations, such as Nestlé and Costco detecting the use of
slave labor in their supply chains (e.g., Kelly, 2016; Lawrence, 2015), as well as stories of
organizations like Walmart and H&M being linked to dangerous labor conditions as exemplified
by the 2012 Tazreen Fashions factory fire and 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse incidents
in Dhaka, Bangladesh (e.g., Abrams, 2016; Manik & Yardley, 2012), remind us that cases of
unsafe working conditions, human exploitation, and slavery tend to occur farther upstream in
supply chains. While it was previously mentioned that labor-intensive industries are particularly
vulnerable to extreme human exploitation and slavery, and that such conditions tend to emerge in
small-scale businesses when downstream, there is ample research that indicates that this
vulnerability to slavery is greater farther upstream (see Crane, LeBaron, Allain, & Behbahani,
2017).
As Gold et al. (2015) highlight, slave labor tends to be used in “simple, non-technological,
traditional work” (485). At the same time, Crane (2013) suggests that slave labor tends to “flourish
in certain industries but not others” (53). Taken together, the extant literature indicates that slavery
is particularly more common in work related to resource extraction and manufacturing, which

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occurs upstream from wholesale and retail operations (see Allain et al., 2013). Specifically, these
include mining, quarrying, and extraction (e.g., forestry and fisheries); agriculture production and
processing; raw resource manufacturing (e.g., brick and charcoal making), textiles, carpet, leather,
and jewellery manufacturing; and construction (e.g., Andrees, 2008; Bales, 2000, 2016; Bales &
Trodd, 2013; Chantavanich, Laodumrongchai, & Stringer, 2016; Simmons & Stringer, 2014;
Stringer, Whittaker, & Simmons, 2016). Research has also shown that slavery is used in less
legitimate industries such as cannabis production (Allain et al., 2013).
Given the structure of the global economy and certain socioeconomic conditions today, a
large portion of slavery that takes place in upstream organizations today occurs in developing
countries such as India, China, and Thailand, as well as countries in Eastern Europe, where labor
has been viewed to be cheap and regulation may be lacking (Crane, 2013). For example, focusing
on the fisheries industry as a recent example, research has documented and provided empirical
evidence indicating that slave labor has been used by large and small-scale organizations in
Thailand’s offshore fishing and shrimping operations. This research has indicated that workers,
who are often migrants, are increasingly exploited in Thailand’s fishing industry through
hazardous conditions, abuse, threats, deception, and limited to no payment, debt, and restricted
mobility (Chantavanich et al., 2016; Marschke & Vandergeest, 2016). While not all individual
cases represent slavery, some do. At the same time, some cases have occurred in organizations that
fall within the supply chains of organizations such as Costco and Nestlé (Marschke & Vandergeest,
2016; New, 2015).
However, it is important to note that this does not exclude the possibility of slavery tied to
upstream operations in developed countries. For instance, until recently, researchers and
practitioners have regarded New Zealand’s fisheries industry as world class and world leading in

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innovation and economic efficiency. However, recent research has revealed prolonged and
extreme human exploitation, including cases of slavery, on a large South Korean offshore fishing
vessel in New Zealand (Simmons & Stringer, 2014; Stringer & Simmons, 2015; Stringer et al.,
2016). Similar to cases of slavery in Thailand’s fisheries industries, enslaved workers were
physically constrained to fishing vessels as they were on long-haul vessels where they experienced
abuse, violence (including sexual assault in some cases), deception, and threats from crew
members, as well as limited or refusal of wages earned. At the same time, these studies revealed
that not all workers were enslaved and varying degrees of exploitation were exercised on the
vessel.
Crucially, while evidence indicates that slavery certainly occurs in small-scale organizations
upstream, it also highlights that it can occur in larger-scale organizations, and is not limited to
small groups of workers. As Andrees (2008) notes, slavery in upstream operations such as
agriculture and construction in Europe often penetrates a large pool of highly vulnerable migrant
workers. At the same time, Allain et al. (2013) found that “the product supply chains relevant to
forced labour in the UK are relatively short, with a few, relatively large, players involved” (40).
Overall, as I have explained in this section, organizations within industries that operating
farther upstream are particularly vulnerable to slavery as these industries tend to be labor intensive
and take place in contexts with susceptible socioeconomic, cultural, and geographic conditions
(see Crane, 2013). Further, although most cases tend to emerge within organizations in developing
countries, cases have also emerged within developed countries. Research also suggests that slavery
farther upstream may move beyond small-scale organization and penetrate larger-scale
organizations. Lastly, while not all organizations engaged in slavery upstream are tied to large
multinational organizations downstream, some are as they fall within their supply chains.

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Intermediaries (labour providers)
While slavery can take place at various stages in the supply chain, upstream and/or downstream,
it is not always clear who—that is, what organization— is engaging in slavery as a large portion
of the extant literature mentions specific sites where slavery occurs (e.g., a farm or a fishing vessel)
but also the presence of recruiters, brokers, and organizations that other labor services. However,
as Allain et al. (2013) illustrate, much clarity emerges when it is formally recognized that two
distinct organizational forms are frequent perpetrators of slavery (i.e., “employ” the workers):
producers and intermediaries. Here, a producer is “engaged in the production of a specific product
and provides direct employment to workers in this activity,” whereas intermediaries (i.e.,
temporary labour agencies) “mediate between individual workers and the organisations that need
work done, shaping how workers are matched to organisations, how tasks are performed, and how
conflicts are resolved’ (Bonet, Cappelli, & Hamori, 2013) […and, thus] are not directly engaged
in production” (26). Notably, although producers refer to organizations involved in the physical
production of goods since Allain et al. focus on supply chains, it can also be useful to cluster them
together to service providers such as sex brothels who do not produce a physical good but may
directly enslave people for their core activity or service provided. The important point to note is
that intermediaries not only exist and have a role in slavery, but may also be the direct perpetrator
of slavery (Allain et al., 2013; Crane et al., 2017).
Although general intermediaries can exist in many forms, such as one time brokers and
recruiters that charge finding fees to a worker and/or an organization and are therefore a part of
the pathway to slavery, the extant literature suggest that intermediaries that are perpetrators of
slavery may exercise different degrees of power over enslaved workers—that is, some
intermediaries will be guilty of being the sole organization that enslaves workers, whereas others

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may work together with the organizations to which they offer their labour services to create
conditions that constitute slavery. On the one hand, research on the United Kingdom provides
empirical evidence that in some cases intermediaries, such as temporary agencies, recruitment
agencies, labour providers, gang masters, and payroll companies, have been the organization that
is directly responsible for “the terms and conditions of employment of the worker” (Allain et al.,
2013: 27). In other words, although they may be placed at a specific site such as a construction site
or a farm, their overall conditions of slavery are enacted by the intermediary and not the
organization that is engaging in the primary activities (e.g., construction or farming). On the other
hand, research suggests that while intermediaries such as manning agents may coerce workers
through the confiscation of important identification documents, holding of collateral, refusal to
pay wages, and threats to workers and their families, such conditions may also be met by violence
and abuse by the site of work such as a fishing vessel (e.g., Simmons & Stringer, 2014; Stringer
& Simmons, 2015; Stringer et al., 2016). As Stringer and Simmons (2015) found in their study of
the New Zealand fisheries industry, both vessel officers and recruitment agents exercised power
over crew members to intimidate them and restrict their freedom.
Overall, the recognition of intermediaries as a specific organizational form that may
perpetrate slavery has brought much clarity to our understanding of slavery (see Allain et al.,
2013). However, the empirical research on slavery indicates that it is still often “difficult to allocate
responsibility for perpetrating the offence” (Allain et al., 2013: 27) as the system that supports
slave labour is becoming more and more complex through outsourcing and subcontracting (see
LeBaron, 2014).

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Connecting the dots: How everything fits together
So how does everything fit together in the grand scheme of slavery? In the previous section, I
presented and explained a simple model of how slavery is linked to organizations. I specifically
sought to bring clarity to the field by illustrating where—that is, in what type of organizations—
slavery occurs in modern society. In drawing on the extant literature on slavery, I showed that
slave labour is deployed by downstream organizations, upstream organizations, and
intermediaries. Thus, slavery is not only linked to organizations, but it also takes place in
organizations of various forms and sizes from numerous industries and at different stages in the
supply chain. At the same time, I highlighted that scholars have recognized that the way that
slavery is deployed in modern society creates a situation where multiple organizations and entities
may have a role in the overall creation of slavery conditions. In turn, I emphasize that to understand
slavery in an organizational setting we must examine the different types of organizations
associated with slavery in isolation as well as how all the moving part fit together as a whole. In
the following section, I discuss two important aspects of slavery that are crucial for our
understanding of the horrific issue: issues of power and slavery’s system level characteristics.
Instead of discussing each aspect in extensive detail, I seek offer an overview of them with the
hopes of stimulating rigorous research that elaborates of them.
Issues of power
By definition, power has long been and still is at the core of slavery (see Allain, 2009, 2012). It
has been documented that in cases of slavery, organizational actors, may it be an agent in an
intermediary or an operator of a producer, exercise power over workers through threat, abuse,
dehumanization, restricted freedoms, and economic exploitation (Crane, 2013). However, while
these criteria represent the exercising of power as per the definition of slavery, the research on

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slavery reveals ties to the broader issues of power. For instance, as Jacobs (1974) highlights power
and control “can be thought of in terms of vulnerability as well as dependence,” noting that junior
colleagues who are in need may end up giving compliance to their seniors (48). Meanwhile, issues
of vulnerability and dependence between people, as well as organizations, emerge frequently
within studies on slavery.
First, an extensive body of literature on slavery indicates that slavery perpetrators often
exploit highly vulnerable people and/or groups of people as their slaves (Kara, 2011). Notably,
research suggests that slavery often entails the exploitation of migrant workers that live in poverty,
are unemployed, may have been displaced, and likely do not speak the local language (e.g.,
Shelley, 2003), which makes them particularly vulnerable to trafficking and slavery. For instance,
whereas studies on slavery in the United Kingdom and other part of Western Europe indicate that
many, but not necessarily all, enslaved workers are migrants that have been recruited from Eastern
Europe, as well as Vietnam, studies on countries like Thailand and New Zealand’s fisheries
industries document the exploitation of migrants from neighbouring regions and countries, such
as Cambodia and Indonesia (e.g., Allain et al., 2013; Andrees, 2008; Chantavanich et al., 2016;
Stringer et al., 2016). Thus, as Crane (2013) suggests, the socioeconomic contexts (i.e., poverty
and relative poverty, education and awareness, unemployment) may play a crucial role in the
emergence of slavery as people from poor socioeconomic contexts may be more vulnerable to
deception, particularly when it pertains to the potential to generate personal income.
Nonetheless, as mentioned earlier, not all workers within organizations that are slavery
perpetrators experience the same level of exploitation. Thus, this poses an interesting question
related to vulnerability and power within slavery settings. As Marschke and Vandergeest (2016)
point out in the context of trafficking and migration, research “does not account for the wide

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variety of situations of migrant workers, nor does it account for the agency of workers as they seek
to better their working conditions” (41). The same can be said true about research on slavery.
Second, scholars suggest that issues of vulnerability, dependence, and therefore power are
present between organizations and throughout supply chains that involve slavery. While scholars
argue that many contemporary slave holders are “criminals who operate in the shadows of
underregulated sections of the economy” (Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2017: 9), and that no perpetrator of
slavery uses it accidentally, or through negligence or ignorance (New, 2015), some scholars also
suggest that deployment of slavery in upstream organizations may in part be in response to
upstream organizations’ exercising of their dominance and positions to demand lower prices from
suppliers as indicated in the passage below. Thus, as Crane (2013) argues, slavery is “more likely
to be associated with small-scale businesses with limited potential for capturing value” and will
tend “to enter stages of the supply chain where margins are narrow and where value is captured
further downstream by larger and more powerful interests” (54).
In farming, for instance, the prevailing economic logic in the UK is that small operations
struggle to survive in the face of industry consolidation which creates larger and more
powerful competitors that can reap economies of scale. Food processors and retailers are
also mainly large players that can dictate prices down through the supply chain, which
leaves farmers at the bottom tier of the supply chain with narrow margins.
(Allain et al., 2013: 32)
Taken together, this section illustrates that one crucial aspect that ties slavery to
organizations is power in a broader sense beyond the definition of slavery. I have shown briefly
that power, in terms of vulnerability and dependence, between people and groups of people, as
well as between organizations, can be tied to the deployment of slavery in organizations. At the

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same time, it has been highlighted that a lack of power and agency has been attributed to enslaved
workers in the extant literature. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Surely, the extensive
body of literature on power in management and organizational research (e.g., Lawrence, 2008;
Lawrence & Buchanan, 2017; Pfeffer, 1981) can contribute to our understanding of slavery. At the
same time, the extremities and uniqueness of slavery may be potentially fruitful context to
contribute back to broader research on power.
A system level issue
As New (2015) argues, “modern slavery should be seen not merely as an exogenous problem
which firms have a responsibility to address, but as an endemic feature of the socio-economic
systems which is, in part, constituted by firms themselves” (697). Thus, as scholars have done so
with research and theory on historical slavery (e.g., Cooke, 2003; Schermerhorn, 2015), to fully
grasp how slavery is linked to organizations, it is crucial to recognize its ties broader systems that
are a part of society. While there are many broad and narrow systems against which slavery can
be examined, I focus on slavery in relation to socioeconomic system and institutional
environments, namely in terms of the structure of the global economy and informal and formal
institutions, as I have previously touched base on issues related to poverty, education, and
unemployment (see Crane, 2013).
First, there is no questioning that slavery is a part of organizational life and global supply
chains that connects organizations around the world. While most cases of slavery may not emerge
directly in dominant downstream organizations with which members of society in developed
countries may have regular contact, evidence exists indicating that it is linked to products that
consumers purchase from downstream organizations, although what percentage of global
consumer products to be exact remains a question. Nonetheless, as the detection of slavery within

19
the supply chain of lead firms (Barrientos, 2013) such as Nestlé and Costco indicate, slavery can
be linked to downstream organizations through today’s global supply chains. As Allain et al.
(2013) note, slavery “might emerge in subcontracted product supply chains, in labour supply
chains involving different types of intermediaries, or a combination of the two,” and that it is more
likely to occur in the parts of the economy that find itself comprised of multiple tiers of labour
market intermediaries (3). As New (2015) points out, this multi-tiered sub-contracting
environment creates a level of opacity that is problematic because it can make slavery appear
invisible or at least difficult to detect. Further, given that “supply chains are internationally
connected and highly outsourced today, the risk of using slave labour somewhere in the supply
chain is present in almost all industries” (Gold et al., 2015: 486). Meanwhile, Crane et al. (2017)
highlight that forced labor and slavery “in the contemporary period elucidates a crucial governance
gap in the industrialized world, and points to the failure of existing public and private governance
initiatives” (3). Overall, this area of focus is particularly important as contract employment and
subcontracting have become a taken-for-granted part of today’s global supply chains and economy
which has been argued to create conditions that are especially vulnerable to human exploitation
and slavery (Allain et al., 2013; Andrees, 2008; LeBaron, 2014; New, 2015), as illustrated below.
After all, corporations themselves have given rise to complexity and very high levels of
subcontracting within both labor and product supply chains, as they have continually
restructured production in recent decades to cut costs and reduce legal ownership to curtail
liability. As corporations have moved toward arm’s-length contractual arrangements with
suppliers, they have introduced the risk of highly exploitative labor relations into their
supply chains. After all, forced labor, slavery, and other forms of labor exploitation are not
randomly occurring relations. Rather, they are a coherent management practice that

20
suppliers use to balance contractual demands for low-priced production with quick
turnaround times, short contracts, unstable demand, and quickening speed to market.
(LeBaron, 2014: 238–239)
Second, the institutional environments in which slavery perpetrators are situated helps us
better understand how slavery fits into society. While it was previously mentioned that scholars
have long recognized slavery’s ties to culture norms and traditions (e.g., Bales, 2000) and that
slavery is a universally condemned practice and is illegal in international law, it is important to
note that much of slavery today takes place in organizations that situate themselves beyond formal
institutions that govern society. Indeed, as Crane (2013) notes,
illegitimate practices (such as slavery) are more likely to persist in low-legitimacy
industries (such as sex work, domestic work, or unauthorized mining), because
organizations in these industries already seek to operate beyond the oversight of regulators
and other formal institutional forces.
(54)
At the same time, although Choi-Fitzpatrick (2017) states that “[i]n many places
contemporary slavery occurs outside the law and beyond the public’s eye,” he also points out that
in places such as South Asia, the conditions of slavery are different as it “does not take place in
hidden pockets of the market [and] it happens on a regular basis as a broadly accepted (if
misunderstood) form of employment” (9–10). Taken together, as Crane (2013) argues, a key to
understanding the persistence of slavery is to understand how “institutional forces that render
slavery illegitimate are deflected in some way by external and internal contingencies,” a term that
he calls “institutional deflection” (51).

21
While an extensive examination of how slavery is a system level issue is beyond the scope
of this chapter, I have provided a brief overview of how slavery has been linked to socioeconomic
systems such as global supply chains as well as the institutional environments in which it takes
place. Because slavery is a complex phenomenon that involves multiple organizational forms and
is enabled by numerous conditions (see Crane, 2013), examining how slavery fits into broader
systems at play can substantially contribute to our understanding of it, not just within an
organizational context, but as a social issue in general. Surprisingly, despite slavery’s clear tie to
supply chains, the issue has attracted very little attention from supply chain researchers, with two
notable exceptions that aim to stimulate research in the field (Gold et al., 2015; New, 2015).
Addressing slavery linked to organizations
Just as with other topics that deal with the dark side of organizational behaviour or life (Griffin,
O’Leary, & Kelly, 2004; Linstead, Marechal, & Griffin, 2014; Vaughan, 1999), our understanding
of slavery in organizational settings would not be complete without knowledge on how the horrific
issue may be addressed. However, given the complex nature of slavery and its embeddedness as a
system level issue, slavery certainly presents a formidable challenge for those that seek to combat
it and will require multiple party engagements. While the field has seen progress with the creation
of the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act and California’s Transparency in Supply Chains
Act, there is still a long way to go on the monitoring and detection front, let alone the abolition
front. For instance, Gold et al. (2015) note that “[d]ue to a lack of effective indicators, new tools
and indicator systems need to be developed that consider the specific social, cultural and
geographical context of supply regions” (485). Meanwhile, the effectiveness of national and
regional policies that have been enacted have been called into serious question as they focus on
the declaration of efforts towards addressing slavery and human trafficking by a select number of

22
large corporations, with no emphasis on effective measures or actual practices beyond
declarations. Thus, as scholars such as New (2015) suggest, “[r]esearchers need to focus less on
the espoused policies of corporations, and more on the enacted practice” (697). At the same time,
as indicated in the passage below, efforts to combat slavery continue to overlook some of the most
crucial conditions that researchers argue contribute to the existence of slavery in supply chains and
organizations.
Despite increasing evidence that subcontracting—and indeed, the very way that supply
chains are organized—fuels exploitative labor practices, discussions of how to eradicate
forced labor from supply chains have scarcely mentioned the political economy and ethics
of the business models that promote subcontracting. Few academics, policy makers, or even
NGOs have questioned the dynamics of subcontracting, perhaps because there is no law
against it.
(LeBaron, 2014: 239)
Crucially, because slavery as a management practices is enabled through both macro-
institutional conditions and micro-organizational level capabilities (Crane, 2013), effective
mechanisms to combat slavery will surely require a multi-party and multiple solutions that vary
depending on context, as sanctions and policies alone will not counter slavery and human
trafficking (Feingold, 2005) as supported by the passage below. More specifically, as Foot (2016)
argues, to effectively combat slavery, all sectors must work together to build robust cross-sector
partnerships (see Seitanidi & Crane, 2014) that address prevention, protection, and prosecution.
Depending on the type of industry, the tactics will vary, but such efforts will assuredly
involve the following: elevated efforts by law enforcement to proactively investigate and
intervene in human trafficking crimes; the expansion of community-based antislavery

23
efforts; elevated funding for anti-trafficking police, prosecutors, and judges, especially in
developing nations; fast-track courts to prosecute trafficking crimes quickly so as to
minimize risks to the survivor-witness; and a massive increase in the financial penalties
associated with human trafficking crimes, including enterprise corruption, asset forfeiture,
and victim compensation, to help former slaves get their lives back on track.
(Kara, 2011: 71).
In the grand scheme of things, it is becoming increasingly recognized in research and
practice that addressing critical social issues, not just slavery, cannot rely on regulation alone.
After all, regulation in the form in international law in itself, as several scholar and law
professionals highlight (e.g., Allain, 2012; Quirk, 2006), suffers from loopholes, a lack of
awareness, and ineffective enforcement. Further, as Crane and Matten (2016) argue, not only is
inconceivable that we ignore the actions and agendas of companies in the face of the greatest
challenges facing mankind, but if a fundamental, systematic change is in order, the active
engagement of companies is required. Thus, with slavery’s ties to global supply chains (Crane et
al., 2017) and the global economy in mind, efforts to address the use of slave labour in
organizational settings will also require engagement from companies.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have sought to bring clarity to the issue of slavery by addressing the question:
How is slavery linked to organizations in modern society? To answer my question, I presented
simple model of slavery and its links to organizations that explained how slavery emerges in three
areas: downstream organizations, upstream organizations, and intermediaries. Next, I provided an
overview on two important aspects of slavery, power and its system-level characteristics, to show

24
how the various links that slavery has to organizations fit together to form the broader landscape
of slavery. Lastly, I discussed the current state of our understanding of how to address slavery in
organizational settings, and highlighted that the extant research suggests that the effective
combatting of slavery will require the active engagement of companies, as a part of a collaboratives
cross-sector approach that adapts to the needs for the local context.
At the same time, a key objective of this chapter was to contribute to broadening the literature
on violence and abuse in the workplace to include the horrific issue of slavery that has somehow
slipped under the radar amongst management and organizational researchers. While some readers
may not have been familiar with slavery prior to reading this chapter, I hope that it has helped
clarify that slavery is an important issue that deserves great attention. After all, while many of the
chapters in this book shine light on important issues such as aggression, violence, abuse,
discrimination, sexual harassment, alcohol and drug use, and stress, which have often been
clustered together as the dark side of organizational behaviour or life (Griffin et al., 2004; Linstead
et al., 2014; Vaughan, 1999), in many cases, slavery is the epitome of a workplace in which
someone experiences all these conditions simultaneously, thus representing an extreme form of
human exploitation.
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