This paper aims to investigate the role of business–NGO (B2N) collaborations in tackling modern slavery in supply chains. It explores the motivations that drive firms and non-government organisations (NGOs) to work together, the forms that these collaborations take and their business and social impacts.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 24 senior representatives from a cross-section of Global North firms and NGOs, the authors adopt an abductive approach to generate new insights into the drivers, structures and impacts of B2N collaborations. Institutional theory, stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory serve as the theoretical frame of reference.
Firm involvement in B2Ns is driven by stakeholder concerns, institutional pressures and a lack of in-house expertise. NGO involvement is driven by opportunities to influence corporate practice, access resources and advance their mission. B2N collaborations can be divided into dyadic partnerships where NGOs offer one-to-one support to firms and multi-stakeholder initiatives that facilitate collective advocacy, industry coordination and knowledge sharing.
The results of the study can help managers to understand the B2N collaboration options available to them when it comes to tackling modern slavery, and their likely impact on operations, supply chain management and society.
The authors develop a typology that distinguishes B2N collaborations by their business and social impacts. It yields four collaboration archetypes: off-the-shelf consultancy (low business impact and low social impact), critical friend model (high business impact and low social impact), advocacy (low business impact and high social impact) and sharing best practices (high business impact and high social impact).
