Modern Slavery as a Management Practice: Exploring the Conditions and Capabilities for Human Exploitation

Abstract

Scant attention has been paid to the phenomenon of modern slavery in the management literature. This paper redresses this by identifying modern slavery as a management practice, comprising exploiting/insulating capabilities and sustaining/shaping capabilities. A model is presented that specifies how these micro organization-level capabilities enable enterprises that deploy slavery to take advantage of the macro institutional conditions that permit the practice to flourish in the face of widespread illegality and illegitimacy. Potential implications for management theory and suggestions for further theoretical and empirical research are then advanced.