By Hemant Harrielall
Factory collapse, fraud in food supply chains, modern day slavery. It is shocking to hear how poorly some supply chains are managed, with such dangerous consequences for life and limb, in almost every country and region of the world. No country has escaped a scandal of this kind. Allegations of state capture in South Africa. Fraud charges and horsemeat scandals in the UK. Diseased pig meat in China. And slavery remains rife in all corners of the world.
Procurement and supply management are at the forefront of these kinds of issues and the profession can do much to influence business and governments on the value of ethics in supply chains and to prevent many of these kinds of dangers from happening in the first place.
Aside from the moral issues of how business should conduct itself in a world that is getting smaller and in which supply chains are becoming longer and more complex, there are some other drivers that make ethical practice essential for professional and non-professional buyers alike.
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Join us a Smart Procurement World in September for a session on ethics in strategic planning.
Willem Ellis, Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Gender & Africa Studies, at the University of the Free State, will take a look at how procurement should be positioned to talk ethics and strategy at the same time. Ellis will also unpack how ethical considerations can be incorporated into planning and policy making in an organisation.
