Academic reporting modern slavery compliance of Australia’s corporate giants wins global honour
3 July 2023
A Monash Business School Finance researcher who is helping transform modern slavery reporting standards and legislation, both in Australia and globally, has received a major international award.
Dr Nga Pham, a senior research fellow at the Monash Centre for Financial Studies (MCFS), is with colleagues Dr Bei Cui and Dr Ummul Ruthbah, developing the Modern Slavery Research Program, which has analysed and publicly reported the disclosure quality of Australia’s 300 largest listed companies, and helps companies navigate and improve their modern slavery disclosure.
Dr Nga Pham has received a global honour.
Dr Pham, CFA, received the Rising Star Award at the ICGN (International Corporate Governance Network) Global Governance and Stewardship Awards in Canada. She was nominated by US asset manager Franklin Templeton’s Vice President, Sustainability Global Markets, James Andrus, for a wide body of research, public advocacy and industry engagement achievements in environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), principally modern slavery.
Her nomination was also supported by senior practitioners at Australian superannuation funds HESTA and AustralianSuper.
ICGN is a global network of institutional investors with $70 trillion of assets under management. Dr Pham co-chairs the Financial Capital Committee of ICGN. Before that, she was a member of ICGN’s Disclosure and Transparency Committee. As institutional investors are the focus of MCFS’s research engagement and impact, Dr Pham’s role at ICGN enables her to share academic research insights that empower investors and governments in fostering corporate accountability and creating sustainable regulatory frameworks worldwide.
Dr Pham is a prolific public policy advocate of modern slavery compliance, with her research extensively featured in the Australian government’s 2023 review of the Modern Slavery Act.
Another ESG-related achievement noted in her nomination was her contribution to the Real Carbon Price Index of global carbon pricing. Dr Pham, with Dr Cui and Dr Ruthbah, in collaboration with SparkChange and C2Zero, launched the RCPI in 2021. The RCPI is now distributed by Bloomberg.
“Nga is unique in that she is an academic using her substantial skills to benefit practitioners."
Dr Pham has exceptionally close industry ties and partnerships, and recently published the book State on Board! Navigating Corporate Governance in Emerging Market Business.
“Nga’s achievements are outstanding in research, engagement, policy advocacy and market capacity building, all contributing to the governance and stewardship ecosystem,” said Mr Andrus in his nomination.
At the time of his nomination Mr Andrus was the Interim Managing Investment Director, Sustainable Investing, of CalPERS, which manages pension and health benefits for more than 1.5 million Californian public servants.
“Nga is unique in that she is an academic using her substantial skills to benefit practitioners,” he wrote.
“Nga’s achievements are beyond the role of an academic researcher. Her contact with practitioners informs her research. She sets an example for producing industry-relevant research, promoting engagement and creating research impacts. Her independent and rigorous academic research provides evidence-based insight that informs companies’ and investors’ decisions.”
When accepting the award, Dr Pham said there were “two bridges” she aspired to strengthen in her future work.
A stronger bridge between academia and industry was paramount, she said. “Sometimes academics put a lot of work into our research but the industry never learns about it. I want industry practitioners to know more about our work and use more of our work,” she said.
Secondly, a better bridge between emerging and developed markets was needed, said Dr Pham, who held Dean and Deputy Dean roles at Hanoi University from 2007-2018.
“Working in both markets I can really see how developed markets can introduce best practices to emerging markets,” Dr Pham said.
Ambitions to expand modern slavery scoring of listed companies
Currently the Australian government doesn’t monitor or penalise organisations for modern slavery compliance, and organisations producing less than $100 million in annual revenue are not mandated to report their standards.
But the government wants to improve disclosure quality monitoring and potentially introduce penalties, Dr Pham said. This year’s public review recommends the current Modern Slavery Act expand reporting to companies with revenue more than $50 million, thereby exponentially increasing transparency and accountability throughout corporate Australia.
Dr Pham said such developments would massively increase requirements for the services offered by her MCFS team, which could then scale up to the role of an “independent market monitor”.
“We started our research in 2021 with analytics on Australia’s largest 100 public companies. Then immediately there was market demand for us to increase this to the top 300 companies,” Dr Pham said.
“But scoring (companies’ modern slavery statements) requires a lot of resources; it’s a massive undertaking. If we scale up, and consider new technology like machine scoring through a natural language processing algorithm, we could potentially assess thousands of statements a year.”
But upscaling requires funding, and while the team was currently exploring potential funding avenues, progress in this area was challenging, Dr Pham said. “If we don’t get adequate funding to upscale we will stay as we are and continue to benchmark 100 largest ASX-listed companies annually,” Dr Pham said.
In a supporting statement for Dr Pham’s ICGN Rising Star Award, Monash Business School’s Deputy Dean of External Engagement, Professor Deep Kapur, said Dr Pham’s recent achievements highlighted “the power of ideas, persistence, and integrity in research and innovation”.
“As a passionate advocate for better corporate governance standards and information disclosure, Nga engages with investors to ensure that their decisions are based on rigorous academic research,” Prof Kapur said.
“Her reputation is built on the independence and transparency of her research work, and her modern slavery disclosure research program has become a trusted industry benchmark in Australia.”