Supply Chain Management Best Practices, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 14Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons

Flashpoints

• Most large and many mid- to small companies have adopted sustainability initiatives, often to comply with regulations or a customer mandate.
• Environmental programs have proven easier to monitor than human rights initiatives.
• Companies need to understand and be able to measure exactly what is involved in the manufacturing and distribution of their products.
• Technology is being leveraged to provide visibility and transparency into global supply chains that are difficult to monitor.
• Eco-friendly strategies, when properly implemented, can produce significant cost savings.

Climate change. Disappearing rainforests. The greenhouse effect. Natural disasters. Forced and slave labor. Acidification of the ocean. Overpopulation. Pestilence and drought. Sounds like the makings of a summer movie blockbuster, but in fact the interest in—and demand for—environmentally friendly business practices has grown at such a rapid pace in recent years that a movement that's gone under various names over the years—conservation, ecology, environmentalism, green—has blossomed into the sustainability movement. It's gone from the “it's just a fad” stage to the “what's our eco-business strategy and how do we execute on it?” stage. And for businesses, it all falls under the heading of corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is a somewhat elastic concept but generally refers to the measurement of ...