Accounting for the working conditions of social compliance auditors investigating modern slavery in supply chains

Purpose This study explores the working conditions of social compliance auditors who investigate modern slavery in global supply chains. This issue is important for understanding how auditors' working environment shapes audits as a key mechanism for detecting modern slavery. Design/methodology/approach We conducted 32 interviews with actors involved in social compliance auditing, including auditors, certification bodies, NGOs and accreditation agencies. Drawing on labour process theory and the complex role of multi-principal employment networks, we analyse how the work of auditing, the objects of that work and the instruments that structure it organises control, dependency and risk across external modern slavery audits. Findings Our findings show that social compliance auditing can be intensive, under-resourced work in remote, often hostile settings, producing heightened vulnerability for auditors. We also find that auditors periodically face physical harm and managerial coercion, including intimidation, violence and efforts to manipulate or suppress critical findings precisely because those findings pose a threat to business interests when non-compliant labour practices are found. Nonetheless, we show how auditors draw on “buffers of culpability” which include micro-resistance, safety-driven adaptation and agentic use of informal tools, relationships and planning, to preserve some investigative integrity despite these adverse conditions. Originality/value Businesses are increasingly held accountable for labour conditions in their supply chains and rely on social compliance auditors to independently assess operating facilities, yet auditors' own working conditions and structural vulnerabilities remain poorly understood. We specify implications at both agentic (micro) and structural (macro) levels for the governance and reform of social compliance auditing in the context of fragmented and multi-principal employment networks.