Transforming Tomorrow 10 In 2015, the same year the Pentland Centre was launched, new modern slavery legislation was introduced in the UK. This legislation required many UK-based businesses to be more transparent about their actions to combat modern slavery in their supply chains. Pentland Brands was one such company and asked Lancaster researchers to collaborate on a research project to investigate effective ways to detect and protect against modern slavery in supply chains. This initial project lasted for more than two years, with PhD student Amy Benstead, supervised by LUMS Professors Mark Stevenson and Linda Hendry, working closely with Pentland Brands’ Corporate Social Responsibility team. The relationship allowed unprecedented access to the development of company strategy and benefited the company as they enacted new policies. Using action research, the Lancaster team were involved in developing an audit protocol for factories and suppliers to identify the warning signs for breaches of modern slavery legislation. This included Amy travelling to Southeast Asia with Pentland Brands of colleagues and participating in the audit of a supplier, and contributing to the development of the first Pentland Brands modern slavery statement. This was a unique opportunity to work with Pentland on a live issue at the launch point of the Pentland Centre. Pentland’s first modern slavery statement is widely considered to be comprehensive, and they have continued to produce informative statements. Since then, Pentland Centre researchers have broadened their interests in social sustainability and labour exploitation. There has been analysis of modern slavery statements in a variety of industrial settings, and other colleagues have sought to understand the ‘worker voice,’ analysing issues, including gender inequality, in supply chains. Work to identify ‘risky’ ports for seafood workers has also been published. 2024 saw the launch of the new Pentland Centre Knowledge and Action Hub: Modern Slavery, Justice and Complex Supply Chains. This Hub brings together a breadth of inter-disciplinary expertise that seeks to better embed social sustainability within both global and local complex supply chains. The Hub provides a forum for research collaboration on how to enhance business governance systems that embody the principle of justice and lead to solutions co-created with industry to further combat modern slavery – noting that this principally takes the form of forced labour in this context. The Hub builds on the expertise of researchers from the Departments of Management Science, Accounting and Finance, Organisation Work and Technology, Entrepreneurship and Strategy and Marketing; the Schools of Law, and Computing and Communications; the Work Foundation; and from our international partners in Leipzig, Germany; and Sunway, Malaysia. Collectively, our research includes methods of detecting and remediating against modern slavery in global supply chains, and assessing the impact of modern slavery legislation which requires organisations to produce annual statements. Ongoing research includes assessing the working conditions of migrant workers, and the social sustainability of the ‘left-behind’ places where migrant workers have settled but have yet to flourish in both their workplaces and communities. There is still much to do to bring justice to global supply chain settings. You can find a map of our expertise, and contact details for the Hub on our webpage. Modern Slavery - a Hot Topic from the Get-go https://pod.co/transforming-tomorrow/modernslavery-and-sustainability Listen...
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