The “Digital Turn” of Value Chain Due Diligence Regulation: How Technology Reconfigures Stakeholder Engagement

ABSTRACT This article examines the “digital turn” in value chain due diligence, focusing on how emerging digital tools and technologies are reshaping the practice and politics of stakeholder engagement in transnational labor governance. As value chain legislation—most notably the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)—extends corporate accountability across global production networks, private digital service providers have become crucial intermediaries translating legal obligations into practice. Drawing on qualitative case studies of prevalent tools such as Ulula , &Wider , and Prewave , the article develops a typology distinguishing between tech‐based remote consultation and predictive stakeholder inference . These models illustrate contrasting orientations—one toward individualized, data‐driven participation, and the other toward algorithmic prediction and surveillance—that carry distinct implications for stakeholder voice, accountability, and power relations along value chains. The analysis situates these technologies within the broader political economy of due diligence, showing how market logics, platform capitalism, and data extraction increasingly shape the terms of engagement between companies and affected rightsholders. Ultimately, the article argues that the digitalization of due diligence risks transforming stakeholder engagement from a participatory mechanism of accountability into a commodified, corporate‐facing data service, raising fundamental questions for its place in the future of the due diligence framework.