For a special issue on Governing Fair and Sustainable Supply Chains to be published in the Global Policy Journal, she has, with researchers at Cornell University, written a paper on the Norwegian Transparency Act. During this presentation I will present the findings in this paper and open a conversation on how to build on this research. For example, by researching living wages. She welcomes suggestions from the research group on research ideas to conduct more targeted research on securing labour rights using the Transparency Act as a legal framework.
The Norwegian Transparency Act, adopted in 2021, requires companies to undertake due diligence regarding human rights in their operations and global supply chains and disclose their effort publicly. The authors assess compliance with the Transparency Act through a granular analysis of the mandatory accounts of due diligence published by a sample of 50 Norwegian consumer goods companies. Coding information from these accounts, the authors construct three indexes: compliance, supply chain risk analysis and due diligence program elements, to provide a descriptive analysis of corporate reporting under the Transparency Act. They find company performance is, at best mediocre, and suggest that these accounts of due diligence do not provide enough information regarding risks to human rights and decent working conditions in supply chains.