Annotated Bibliography Sample: Modern Slavery and Supply-Chain Regulation

Model Answer

Scope and Focus

This annotated bibliography brings together seven sources on the legal regulation of modern slavery within corporate supply chains, with particular attention to the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. The research question addressed is: how effective is transparency-based regulation, compared with mandatory human rights due diligence models, at reducing forced labour risk in global supply chains, and what does this imply for the future direction of UK reform? Sources span peer-reviewed journal articles from supply chain management, business and governance journals, a government guidance document setting out the statutory position, and a research monograph offering a comparative and theoretical overview. Together they were selected to balance doctrinal analysis of the legislation itself against empirical evidence of its real-world effect on corporate behaviour. All sources are referenced in Harvard style throughout, matching the citation convention used across this bibliography and the wider assignment it supports.

Annotations

Crane, A., LeBaron, G., Allain, J. and Behbahani, L. (2019) ‘Governance gaps in eradicating forced labour: from global to domestic supply chains’, Regulation & Governance, 13(1), pp. 86–106.

This article maps the ‘governance gaps’ that allow forced labour to persist despite an expanding web of international, national and corporate regulation. Drawing on interviews with regulators, businesses and civil-society actors, the authors argue that gaps arise not from an absence of rules but from weak enforcement, under-resourced labour inspectorates, and the voluntary character of much corporate self-reporting. The methodology is qualitative and exploratory rather than statistically representative, which limits generalisability but allows rich description of how gaps operate in practice. Credibility is strengthened by the authors’ standing in modern slavery scholarship and by triangulation across stakeholder groups. For this bibliography the article is highly relevant because it supplies the analytical framework used throughout to assess whether the UK’s disclosure-based model actually closes the enforcement deficit it was designed to address, or merely shifts responsibility onto consumers and investors further down the chain.

LeBaron, G. and Rühmkorf, A. (2017) ‘Steering CSR through home state regulation: a comparison of the impact of the UK Bribery Act and Modern Slavery Act on global supply chain governance’, Global Policy, 8(S3), pp. 15–28.

LeBaron and Rühmkorf compare two pieces of UK ‘home state’ legislation — the Bribery Act 2010 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015 — to test whether extraterritorial reporting duties change supplier behaviour abroad. Using survey and interview data from UK-listed firms and their overseas suppliers, they find that the Modern Slavery Act’s disclosure duty produces weaker downstream change than the Bribery Act’s stricter liability regime, because it requires only a statement of steps taken rather than evidence that slavery has been eliminated. The comparative design is a particular strength, isolating the effect of enforcement mechanism rather than topic; a limitation is reliance on self-reported supplier data, which may understate non-compliance. The article is central to this bibliography’s argument that disclosure without a ‘comply or explain further’ backstop under-delivers, directly informing the concluding evaluation of Section 54.

New, S.J. (2015) ‘Modern slavery and the supply chain: the limits of corporate social responsibility?’, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 20(6), pp. 697–707.

New offers an early, sceptical assessment of whether corporate social responsibility frameworks are structurally capable of addressing modern slavery, given supply chains’ length, opacity and reliance on subcontracting. The paper is conceptual rather than empirical, synthesising supply chain management theory with human rights literature to argue that CSR audits routinely miss forced labour because auditors inspect Tier 1 suppliers while exploitation clusters further down the chain. Because the piece predates the Modern Slavery Act’s implementation it cannot evaluate the Act directly, which is a limitation for this bibliography’s contemporary focus; however, its critique of audit-based assurance remains highly relevant to explaining why Section 54 statements, which rely on similar assurance logic, have been criticised as a compliance exercise rather than a driver of substantive change deeper in the supply chain.

Gold, S., Trautrims, A. and Trodd, Z. (2015) ‘Modern slavery challenges to supply chain management’, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 20(5), pp. 485–494.

This paper reframes modern slavery as a supply chain management problem rather than solely a legal issue, proposing that operational tools — supplier mapping, risk scoring, traceability technology — should complement legal compliance. Writing from a management rather than a legal perspective, the authors are credible commentators on implementation feasibility, though the paper offers limited critical engagement with the legal duties themselves, which is a methodological limitation for a source used in a law-focused bibliography. Its relevance lies in illustrating the practical side of compliance that doctrinal legal analyses often overlook: a well-drafted due diligence law is only as effective as a firm’s capacity to actually trace its suppliers, substantiating why several jurisdictions now pair legal duties with technical guidance on supply chain mapping.

Stevenson, M. and Cole, R. (2018) ‘Modern slavery in supply chains: a secondary data analysis of detection, remediation and disclosure’, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 23(2), pp. 81–99.

Stevenson and Cole analyse a large secondary dataset of corporate modern slavery statements alongside NGO-reported cases to test whether disclosure quality correlates with actual detection and remediation activity. They find only a weak relationship: companies producing lengthy, well-written statements are not consistently more likely to report finding or remedying cases of slavery, suggesting that disclosure quality can function as a communications exercise independent of substantive action. The large sample and mixed-methods design are strengths, though reliance on self-reported remediation data introduces potential bias. This is one of the most directly relevant sources in the bibliography, providing empirical evidence rather than doctrinal argument alone for the claim that transparency legislation, absent verification requirements, does not reliably translate into improved supply chain practice.

Home Office (2017) Transparency in Supply Chains etc: A Practical Guide. London: Home Office.

This is the UK government’s own statutory guidance for organisations preparing a slavery and human trafficking statement under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. As a primary regulatory source it is essential for establishing precisely what the law requires — and, crucially, what it does not require, since the guidance recommends but does not mandate action on the six suggested reporting areas. Its authority is unquestionable for describing the legal position, though it is not an independent or evaluative source and must be read alongside the critical academic literature above. Its relevance to this bibliography is foundational: it is the primary text against which the empirical and comparative critiques elsewhere in this collection are assessed, and it clarifies the precise statutory wording that scholars characterise as weak.

LeBaron, G. (2020) Combatting Modern Slavery: Why Labour Governance Is Failing and What We Can Do About It. Cambridge: Polity Press.

LeBaron’s monograph synthesises over a decade of research into global labour governance to argue that voluntary and disclosure-based regulatory models have systematically failed to reduce forced labour, because they leave commercial pressures — squeezed supplier margins, just-in-time purchasing — largely untouched. The book is grounded in extensive fieldwork across multiple industries and jurisdictions, giving it strong empirical credibility, though its policy prescriptions, including binding due diligence and joint liability, are more contestable and reflect the author’s clearly stated normative position. For this bibliography the book provides the comparative and theoretical anchor for evaluating whether the mandatory human rights due diligence models emerging in France and the EU represent a genuine departure from the UK’s disclosure approach, or only a variation on the same limited theme.

Overall Relevance

Together these seven sources build a coherent case that the UK’s transparency-led model, while a valuable first step in raising the profile of modern slavery within corporate governance, is significantly weaker than mandatory due diligence approaches at translating reporting duties into measurably reduced exploitation. The empirical sources demonstrate that disclosure quality does not reliably correlate with substantive remediation, while the comparative and doctrinal sources suggest that binding due diligence duties, backed by meaningful liability, close the enforcement gap more effectively than a duty to explain. This directly informs the bibliography’s assessment of the direction UK supply-chain regulation should now take, and supports a reform-oriented conclusion that favours strengthening Section 54 with a verification and liability mechanism.