The Boundaries of Modern Slavery: The Role of Exemplars in New Category Formation

Modern slavery is one of the most prominent grand challenges facing organizations today. Yet, its precise meaning, and the scope of people and practices it subsumes, remain hotly contested. The recent formation of a legal category of “modern slavery” represents a critical point in establishing clear meanings and boundaries. While existing research on categories has shed light on how such new category meanings and boundaries may be shaped, we lack insight on how this happens in the absence of category prototypes that demarcate the meaning and membership of categories. We turn to category exemplars as an important but, as yet, poorly understood tool influencing category formation and subsequent membership. We conduct a systematic analysis of discourse surrounding the formation of the new category of modern slavery to identify three distinct forms of exemplars (typifying, familiarizing, and scoping), and develop a model that links actors’ use of these exemplars to specific boundary effects across four phases of category formation. We also reveal the conditions under which different exemplars were successful in influencing the final category. We thereby contribute to the literature an exemplar-based theorization of new category formation that explains how categories associated with grand challenges like modern slavery are formed.