Child slavery in supply chains: Actors of the dirty scene

The existence of child slavery in supply chains is increasingly complicated because it not only applies to supply chain actors and corporations at different tiers but also to the effects of external organisations and society. This inevitable complexity is due to the global nature of today’s supply chains. Many corporate sustainability reports or corporate responsibility reports on child labour, reveal only a unilateral explanation and view, which renders the development of child labour measures under the leadership of many companies tardy and inefficient. The problem addressed in this research is the lack of comprehensive investigation into child slavery in supply chains. The primary research question is focused on identifying the key actors involved in combatting child slavery in the supply chain. The research uses thematic analysis of 68 peer-reviewed journal articles containing the keywords: child labour; supply chain, and child slavery; interchangeably in Google Scholar Search. We determined the comprehensive selection of literature by three factors: high frequency of relevant keywords; recent publication period; and more citations. The results identify four main actors influencing child slavery namely i.) Corporations - through their industrial characteristics, strategy, corporate social responsibility and internal stakeholders; ii.) Governments - through their regulations and policies and their intentions to combat child slavery; iii.) Societies through their establishment of social benchmarks and social accountability to address the social crisis; and iv.) External organisations such as ILO, NGOs and trade unions for their dominant involvement in the child slavery phenomena in supply chains. The findings provide a nascent conceptual model for empirical work and a foundation for descriptive and normative research on child slavery in supply chains.