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This is a response to “Taming wicked problems”, a paper recently published in CPOIB in which modern slavery is framed as a wicked problem. The purpose of this study is to convey the author’s appraisal of its contribution to policymaking regarding modern slavery in global supply chains.

The author engages in a discursive review of “Taming wicked problems”, taking inspiration from its perceived strengths and weaknesses to expand on the problem of modern slavery as a challenge to international business (IB) researchers.

“Taming wicked problems” is welcomed as a provocative contribution to modern slavery research in IB, although it is perceived to give too little critical attention to the problem of modern slavery itself.

This is, by design, a subjective assessment of the treatment of modern slavery and policy from the perspective of an IB researcher who has previously studied the phenomenon without a wicked problem framing.

Modern slavery is a serious problem for IB scholars, as they have failed to extrapolate it from their analysis of international business strategy. This paper is intended to advance the disciplinary defence of vulnerable workers exploited to the ultimate benefit of MNEs.

IB must engage critically with international business strategies that heighten the risk of human rights violations. The persistence of modern slavery disadvantages all persons in employment.

This paper seeks to better define the offense implicit in modern slavery so to inform critical IB research into its causes and deterrence.

The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

This paper aims to provide authorities managing free trade zones, business enterprises, financial institutions and dedicated free zone customs, police and immigration command assigned to deal with aspects of movement of goods and persons in and out of the free zones with a clear understanding of the cross-border financial crime risks associated with the African Continental Free Trade Area and the risk control measures that combines human intelligence with advanced technology to combat cross-border financial crimes in the African Continental Free Trade Area.

A range of research activities would be used in this study. In addition to a sweeping literature review of academic, official studies and media writings, the main focus is on critically evaluating and analysing primary data by searching and collecting statutes, court cases, administrative rules and regulations and policy documents.

This paper identified bribery and corruption; modern slavery; and trade-based money laundering as the financial crime risks that are of priority concern to African Continental Free Trade Areas and demonstrated how countries can assess and mitigate these risks through adequate policies, procedures and controls including appropriate compliance management arrangement and adequate screening procedures to ensure high standards when hiring employees; corporate transparency; training on managing incidents of modern slavery, forced labour and third-party exploitation; and appropriate monitoring framework for trade-based money laundering activities.

While many authors have written research papers on intra-African trade, none of those research papers explained how countries can assess and mitigate financial crime risks in free trade zones. This research paper describes the ways in which cross-border financial crime risks can be assessed and adequately addressed by the authorities managing free trade zones. This research paper analyses the risk assessment topic in line with the African Continental Free Trade Area with a focus on free trade zones in Nigeria. This research paper would help authorities managing free trade zones, commercial organisations and business enterprises to identify, prevent and mitigate cross-border financial crime risks. Zone managements and business enterprises that implement the risk-based approach, in line with the guidance given in this research paper, will be well-placed to avoid the consequences of inappropriate de-risking behaviour.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

The paper aims to elaborate on the potential for regeneration of Bagamoyo (Tanzania) through adaptive reuse of its heritage sites. The town was the most important harbour for ivory and slaves of the East-African mainland during the 19th and early 20th century and the colonial capital of German East-Africa between 1885 and 1890. Today, it has 85,000 inhabitants who mainly live in informal settlements while stone town closer to the coast is largely abandoned with its historical buildings in a poor state of conservation.

The first part of the paper describes the history and heritage of the old stone town Bagamoyo, and how it impacts its identity. Additionally, it summarises the critical reception of the town's role in the application to UNESCO World Heritage for “The Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route”. This, in order to consider the reuse of its heritage sites more as part of a layered regeneration process than of a singular narrative for preservation. The second part presents research-by-design proposals investigating the economic, social and cultural potentialities of three spatial layers: the main street, the coastal strip and the shoreline.

The identity and therefore also urban regeneration of post-colonial towns such as Bagamoyo is the result of a complex combination of different narratives rather than of a singular one.

Bagamoyo's heritage has been studied as a driver for international tourism linked to slavery but without successful implementation. This study proposes an alternative perspective by investigating its potential for urban regeneration in line with local needs. Developed in the context of a master studio of architectural design, it presents an innovative didactic approach. Moreover, the methodology of research-by-design can be inspirational for other historical towns.

This paper engages with the important work of Raškovic (2023). The authors agree with Raškovic’s (2023) argument that international business (IB) policy is well positioned to inform and address many of society’s wicked problems, including modern slavery. Beyond supporting this position, the purpose of this paper is to highlight IB’s internal and ongoing debate regarding multinational ownership and control, and how this unresolved theoretical issue can hinder the contribution of IB policy in addressing wicked problems.

By leveraging prior literature, this paper synthesises opposing views on the extent of control that multinational enterprises (MNEs) exert across global value chains (GVCs). The authors then demonstrate why these conflicting perspectives should be resolved to fully realise the task that Raškovic (2023) has laid out for IB policy.

This study argues that IB is steeped in a tradition where ownership has been a proxy for meaningful control. Rising GVCs have complicated this relationship, and while IB recognises this, the field remains short of explicating a set of robust conditions that can detect control in the absence of ownership. Given that responsibility is often based on an assumption of who has control, this ongoing and unresolved debate limits IB’s utility in advancing appropriate policy interventions to tame wicked problems.

This paper makes a contribution by bringing together diverse perspectives on the ongoing debate regarding MNE control in GVC. It demonstrates how this seemingly abstract debate can have significant implications for IB’s role in addressing society’s grand challenges. The authors further suggest that embracing interdisciplinarity and novel analytical tools can assist in demystifying the opaqueness of GVCs and resolving the control “fuzziness” that confuses responsibility boundaries across the GVC.

The purpose of this paper is to engage readers with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) films, which provide a powerful, inspirational digital tool for teachers. The organization's mission is to create documentaries, films and educational materials that contribute to bringing to light compelling stories of Muslim engagement through history and culture. UPF films and educational projects aim to promote peace and understanding to increase cultural pluralism and counter bigotry in our world.

Teachers will be able to utilize the resources provided in this paper to harness the power of media in their classrooms. Outlining the process by which teachers can follow the C3 inquiry using the film Prince Among Slaves will prepare teachers to see the alignment of the C3 Framework with their teaching. The “best practice” classroom strategies in structuring deliberations are ones that encourage students to fully participate and emphasize their voice.

This paper will unpack the practice methods that address the film Prince Among Slaves to be of benefit when sharing narratives through digital film and engage students in critical thinking through the C3 Framework. UPF films are the product of scholarly research and innovative production teams as the films provide the opportunity to visualize and explore multiple perspectives to understand historical content by providing a context for inquiry teaching and learning that is inclusive through deliberative discussions in the classroom.

The author certifies that this manuscript submission is original work and that all authors were involved in the intellectual elaboration of the manuscript and all parties have been acknowledged.

Preservice teachers (n = 39) described their definitions of patriotism and to what extent they believed statements from The 1619 Project (2019) and The 1776 Commission Report (2021) were patriotic.

This study employed a mixed-method survey including open-ended prompts requesting participants’ descriptions of patriotism and Likert scale prompts asking participants to agree/disagree with deidentified statements from The 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission Report. In vivo words reflecting emotional responses to patriotism and the statements informed the categorization process in a second round of coding.

Four categories of patriotism definition were identified. Identified were relationships between groups’ conceptualizations of patriotism and whether statements from history narratives were viewed as patriotic.

This article contributes to the field by exploring the intersectionality of the concept of patriotism with competing narratives regarding the foundation and growth of the United States.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of sustainable board governance, based on (1) sustainability board committees, (2) critical mass of female board members and (3) sustainability-related executive compensation, on sustainable supply chain reporting (SSCR).

Based on stakeholder and critical mass theories, a sample of 1,577 firm-year observations for firms listed at the EuroSTOXX600 for the period 2017–2021 is used. Sustainable board governance and SSCR proxies are collected from the Refinitiv database. Correlation and logit regression analyses are conducted to measure the impact of sustainable board governance on SSCR.

Sustainable board governance significantly improves SSCR. The findings are robust to various robustness checks, based on the modification of dependent and independent variables.

Due to massive regulations on sustainability reporting, finance and corporate governance, firms listed on the EuroSTOXX 600 are focused in this analysis. The European capital market represents a unique setting for archival research.

European standard setters should connect the relationship between sustainable board governance and SSCR in future regulations, for example, due to the recent corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD).

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first analysis on the impact of sustainable board governance on SSCR.

This study aims to present radical abolition studies, which encourages us to (re)member that the abolition of institutions and systems is incomplete without the abolition of their attendant epistemes of domination. The authors draw on the etymology of the word radical to encourage abolitionist praxis to grab systemic harm at its epistemological roots. Within radical abolition studies, this study presents Black abolition theory, which aims to make explicit a theorization of Blackness and works to abolish the episteme of anti-Blackness.

This paper offers Black abolition theory within radical abolition studies to reground abolition in its Black theoretical roots and to interrogate the concept of anti-Blackness and other epistemes of domination in abolitionist study and practice. Using a close reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction, and subsequent books and articles in abolition studies and educational studies that reference it, the authors highlight Du Bois’ original conceptualization of abolitionism as an ultimate refutation of a racial-social order and anti-Blackness. The authors then put Michael Dumas and kihana ross’ theory of BlackCrit into conversation with abolitionist and educational theory to push forward Black abolition theory.

Radical abolition studies and its attendant strand of Black abolition theory presented in this paper encourages scholars and practitioners to go beyond the dismantling of current instantiations of systemic harm for Black and other minoritized people – such as the school as it currently operates – and encourages the questioning and dismantling of the epistemes of domination sitting at the foundation of these systems of harm.

Black abolition theory contextualizes abolition in education by rooting abolitionist educational praxis in Black lineages. More generally, radical abolition studies encourages further research, study and collaboration in partnership with others who have historically participated in the fight against being labeled as subhuman to upend all epistemes of domination.