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The paper explores the notion of worker voice in terms of its implications for supply chain justice. The paper proposes the value of the recognition perspective on social justice for framing workers’ experiences in global supply chains and identifies opportunities for the advancement of the worker voice agenda with recognition justice in mind.

The paper adopts a conceptual approach to explore the notion of worker voice in supply chains in terms of the recognition perspective on social justice.

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) scholarship has considered worker voice in terms of two key paradigms, which we term communication and representation. To address recognition justice for workers in global supply chains, the worker voice agenda must consider designing worker voice mechanisms to close recognition gaps for workers with marginalised identities; the shared responsibilities of supply chain actors to listen alongside the expectation of workers to use their voice; and the expansion of the concept of worker voice to cut across home-work boundaries.

The paper offers conceptual clarity on the emerging notion of worker voice in SSCM and is the first to interrogate the implications of recognition justice for the emergent worker voice agenda. It articulates key opportunities for future research to further operationalise worker voice upon a recognition foundation.

This study aims to contribute to the debate on the efficacy of softer regulations to prevent violations of workers’ rights in the global clothing supply chain.

This study draws on value trap and adverse incorporations as a theoretical lens to understand the reasons behind the continued violations of workers’ rights. The empirical findings are based on an analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews with workers and owners. Extensive documentary evidence to track the plight of workers in Bangladeshi clothing factories during the pandemic.

The study demonstrates how imbalances in supply chain relationships allow retailers to take advantage of the pandemic. The authors find that some retailers worsened the working conditions by cancelling orders, demanding discounts on old orders and forcing suppliers to agree to a lower price for new orders. Large brands and retailers’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic remind us that softer regulations, such as third-party audits, are likely to be ineffective given the power imbalance at the heart of the supply chain.

The study presents a case for regulatory frameworks and intense stakeholder activism to encourage large retailers and brands to behave responsibly. This is especially important when a supply chain is value-trapped and workers are adversely incorporated and unprotected.

Drawing on studies on adverse incorporations, value-trapped supply chains and the plight of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the study offers a broader understanding of the continued violation of workers’ rights and the efficacy of softer regulations.

This impact pathways paper proposes that operations and supply chain management (OSCM) can help to ensure that the transition from a high-carbon to low-carbon fashion industry takes place in a just, inclusive and fair way. By immersion in fashion brands, suppliers and workers' realities across multiple supply chains, the authors identify challenges and issues related to just transitions, whilst proposing research pathways to inspire future OSCM research and collaboration using innovative and creative methods to answer complex questions related to just transition.

The research the authors introduce used a multi-level field research approach to investigate multiple fashion supply chains in transition.

The authors uncovered that in the pursuit of lowering carbon emissions, fast-fashion giants work with industrial associations to create top-down governance tools, leading to severe problems in supply chain data and paradoxical demands. These demands are cascaded onto the workers in these supply chains. The goals and tools dictated by the fashion giants exclude workers, whilst the physiological and psychological effects on the workers are routinely ignored. These issues impede a just transition to a low-carbon fashion industry.

The authors introduce concepts largely missing from OSCM literature and ensure representation of the most marginalised group, supply chain workers, in a novel setting in a call for research in this emerging area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of inventory record inaccuracy due to behavioral aspects of workers on the order and inventory variance amplification.

The authors adopt a continuous-time analytical approach to describe the effect of inbound throughput on the inventory and order variance amplification due to the workload pressure and arousal of workers. The model is numerically solved through simulation and results are analyzed with statistical general linear model.

Inventory management policies that usually dampen variance amplification are not effective when inaccuracy is generated due to workers’ behavioral aspects. Specifically, the psychological sensitivity and stability of workers to deal with a given range of operational conditions have a combined and multiplying effect over the amplification of order and inventory variance generated by her/his errors.

The main limitation of the research is that the authors model workers’ behavior by inheriting a well-known theory from psychology that assumes a U-shaped relationship between stress and errors. The authors do not validate this relationship in the specific context of inventory operations.

The paper gives suggestions for managers who are responsible for designing order and inventory policies on how to take into account workers’ behavioral reaction to work pressure.

The logistics management literature does not lack of research works on behavioral decision-making causes of order and inventory variance amplification. Contrarily, this paper investigates a new kind of behavioral issue, namely, the impact of psycho-behavioral aspects of workers on variance amplification.

This paper aims to examine the relations between supply chain strategies and impact on terms and conditions of employment of multinational corporations operating in China.

Case study analysis of two production plants owned by leading multinational corporations, and a number of their suppliers (five in total), was undertaken. Semi‐structured interviews with managers (personnel, production and supply chain) and workers in each case study were conducted both to gain information and to triangulate evidence. Visits were made to each of the factories and to the environment in which the workers lived and worked.

There is no uniform or single deterministic relationship between supply chains and labour standards. Supply chain strategies, ownership form and industry are all determinants of the relationship. However, size, as measured in terms of number of employees, does not seem a significant factor in power relations. There is also a balance between cost squeeze and other factors (the potential of cost saving, desire for predictability) in relations between existing firms in a supply chain.

Analysis of management practices and its relationship with employment issues in supply chain theory is still not well integrated. Part of the reason lies in the concerns of each discipline. By treating supply chain concerns as a menu of issues rather than an integrative theory, through case study analysis, a nuanced and explanatory detail can be given. These will need later repetition in quantitative or qualitative forms of research. Ontologically, the paper attempts to draw together the critical research and business school approaches to strategic management concerns. While both approaches provide a wealth of substantive evidence, there is a need to read from both perspectives to be able to catch the nature of work organisation and the management practices that inform them in China.

Firms are accountable for upholding worker rights and well-being in their supply base. The authors unpack the evolution in lead firm thinking and practice about how to assure labor conditions at suppliers.

The authors conducted interviews with the social sustainability leaders at 22 global corporations (“lead firms”) and their sustainability consultants to understand how they think about, and enact efforts, to support labor in their supply base. The authors complement this with an analysis of stated practice in proprietary supplier codes of conduct for the manufacturing and extractive-related firms in the S&P 500 and FTSE 350.

The authors’ interviews suggest firms follow two distinct and cumulative approaches: a transactional-based approach leveraging collective buyer power to enforce supplier compliance and a relational-based approach focused on mutual capacity building between lead (buyer) firms and their suppliers. The authors also see the emergence, in a small subset of firms, of a bottom-up approach that recognizes supplier workers as rights-holders and empowers them to understand and claim their rights.

The authors identify systematic convergence in supplier codes of conduct. While the transactional and relational approaches are well documented in the supply chain social sustainability literature, the rights-holder approach is not. Its emergence presents an important complement to the other approaches and enables a broader recognition of human rights, and the duty of Western firms to assure those rights.

The purpose of this study is to provide new insight into the modern slavery threat and to enhance its detection in supply chains by understanding and addressing barriers to whistleblowing. A broad definition of a whistle-blower is adopted, which includes any witness internal or external to an organisation.

This is a viewpoint paper that includes using news reports and other secondary data sources on a recent modern slavery scandal in garment factories in Leicester, UK and the lens of the bystander effect from the social psychology literature. The core focus is on whistleblowing by members of the local community in which an operation or supply chain is embedded.

The phenomenon of modern slavery being an “open secret” within the local community is highlighted. But rather than the case being characterised by widespread whistleblowing, the problem only came into full focus when poor working conditions and forced labour during COVID-19 lockdown restrictions contributed to the spread of the virus. It is argued that overcoming this “bystander effect” can lead to the greater mobilisation of modern slavery whistleblowing.

Two sets of propositions and a conceptual model are provided and seven future research suggestions are outlined, including extending the present study to whistleblowing by victims and other internal members of an organisation or supply chain.

If it can be mobilised, then whistleblowing has the potential to be an important part of detecting modern slavery, either temporarily replacing audits where they are not possible due to social distancing restrictions or directing the use of limited auditing resources to high-risk factories. In this way, combinations of practices can be effectively used to tackle the threat.

This contributes to addressing an important societal problem and one of the grandest challenges facing modern-day supply chains. This, it has been argued, is an even bigger problem now than ever before given the economic and market conditions created by the COVID-19 global pandemic.

This is the first paper to focus on operationalising the practice of whistleblowing as a source of greater supply chain intelligence to aid modern slavery detection. Causes of the bystander effect include the perceived low-emergency threat of modern slavery, the high-ambiguity environment, a low bystander responsibility and low assistance/intervention incentive. Countermeasures include elevating the emergency status of modern slavery, creating a shared sense of responsibility for tackling the problem, having clear reporting channels and taking swift and consistent action when instances of modern slavery are detected.

This paper argues that the closures will cause regressive rather than progressive modern slavery shifts as the necessity of survival prevails over addressing modern slavery risks within supply chains.

In the spring of 2020, global clothing retailers were advised or ordered to close physical stores due to lockdown measures of the COVID-19 pandemic and many supply chains temporarily halted production. This paper explains how pre-pandemic modern slavery advancements will be detrimentally affected as a result of societal lockdowns and apparel retail closures around the world.

Two consequences of lockdowns are highlighted, which will have negative implications on modern slavery progress. These are the exploitation of vulnerable people, which includes higher exploitation of those already involved in modern slavery and increased risk of exploitation for those susceptible to being drawn (back) into modern slavery and; the need for repetition of previous work completed by external stakeholders or in some cases, a better alternative.

The pandemic itself causes friction between immediate response solutions and long-term modern slavery goals.

In response to modern slavery drivers, governments may need to fill governance gaps, to control the power of corporations and to reconsider migration regulation.

The COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent supply chain disruptions were unforeseen. This paper argues that there are significant negative effects on the developments in modern slavery eradication made in the past 10 years. As businesses struggled for basic survival, the apparel manufacturing sector has been detrimentally affected as upstream labourers are now at higher risk from the increased likelihood of modern slavery violations.

The globalisation of supply chains has contributed to modern slavery by degrading labour standards and work practices. The inherent difficulties involved in monitoring extremely fragmented production processes also render workers in and from developing countries vulnerable to labour exploitation. This research adopts a benchmark methodology that will help examine the inherent modern slavery challenges.

This study examines how the benchmark model, including governance, risk assessment, purchasing practice, recruitment and remedy of victims, addresses supply chain modern slavery challenges. The proposed hypotheses are tested based on the reoccurring issues of modern slavery in global supply chains.

Estimations suggest that modern slavery is a growing and increasingly prominent international problem, indicating that it is the second largest and fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide except for narcotics trafficking. These social issues in global supply chains have drawn attention to the importance of verifying, monitoring and mapping supply chains, especially in lengthy and complex supply chains. However, the advent of digital technologies and benchmarking methodologies has become one of the existing key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the effectiveness of modern slavery initiatives in supply chains.

This review provides an understanding of the current situation of global supply chains concerning the growing social issue of modern slavery. However, this includes various individual specialities relating to global supply chains, modern slavery, socially sustainable supply chain management (SCM), logistic social responsibility, corporate social responsibility and digitalisation. Furthermore, the review provided important implications for researchers examining the activities on benchmarking the effectiveness of the existing initiatives to prevent modern slavery in the supply chains.

Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.

The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.

The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.

As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.

The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.

This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.