MBA Guest Speaker: Director of Fifty Eight, Quintin Lake on modern slavery in business

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As part of the MBA Guest Speaker series, MBA students heard from Quintin Lake, Director of Fifty Eight, a company that specialise in ethical supply chains.

Quintin’s presentation, “Modern Slavery: How Should Business Respond?” examined one of the biggest global challenges that companies face in their supply chains. 

Quintin works with companies to address modern slavery and build ethical supply chains. MBA qualified, he is also a research fellow at Ashridge Centre for Business and Sustainability, where he is leading studies into corporate approaches to address modern slavery.

During his presentation, Quintin talked about the UK Modern Slavery Act that will require large companies to report on how they are addressing the risks of modern slavery in their business from October 2015.

He observed that 71% of companies believe there is a likelihood of modern slavery occurring at some stage in their supply chains, however “customers have an intrinsic expectation that slavery does not exist by any company across the scale.”

With this expectation juxtaposing the reality, Quintin concluded that corporations need to shorten their supply chains and actively respond to issues.

He said:  “When a company is engaged, they do not pull out of their supplier deal when modern slavery comes to light but instead address the issues to improve the working condition of those affected.”