Empirical studies indicate that business compliance with the UK Modern
Slavery Act is disappointing, but they struggle to make sense of this
phenomenon. This article offers a novel framework to understand how
business organizations construct the meaning of compliance with the UK
Modern Slavery Act. Our analysis builds on the endogeneity of law theory
developed by Edelman. Empirically, our study is based on the analysis of
the modern slavery statements of 10 FTSE 100 (Financial Times Stock
Exchange 100 Index) companies in the food and tobacco sector, backed
by interviews with business, civil society, and public officers. We offer a
dynamic model that draws attention to the role of compliance professionals
in framing ambiguous rules and devising a variety of organizational responses
to modern slavery law. Contrary to extant research that tends to praise
organizations for going “beyond compliance”, our study underlines the
risks of managerialization of modern slavery law, whereby merely symbolic
structures come to be associated with legal compliance, even when they are
ineffective at tackling modern slavery.