Modern slavery disclosures are essential for monitoring and eradicating slavery in global supply chains. As research in accounting on this topic is still exploratory, this study aims to provide an overview of academic trends, identify gaps, suggest future research directions and offer recommendations for policymakers.
About 32 highly related papers are selected via a citation map generated by Biblioshiny from the Web of Science database to identify the key research areas. Additionally, six manually searched papers from Google Scholar contribute insights into emerging topics.
This study finds varied scholarly opinions on factors influencing modern slavery disclosures. Moreover, selected papers predominantly focus on regions with specific disclosure laws like the UK, Australia and the US, neglecting areas without such regulations. Additionally, the focus tends to be on companies legally required to disclose, while voluntary disclosures and unregulated firms are overlooked.
This review identifies three principal research areas and outlines three directions for future studies. It introduces a framework with practical recommendations for policymakers aimed at enhancing legislative enforcement, educating on disclosure processes and establishing relevant systems and platforms.
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first systematic literature review on modern slavery that offers a comprehensive regulatory recommendation framework. This study contributes to the literature by providing innovative future research directions.
