Posted: Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 11:12AMAuthor: David Rae - Procurement Leaders
Published in: Edition 14 (June 2008)
Come Together
Almost half a century ago economist Milton Friedman wrote in his book Capitalism and Freedom that the business world had just one responsibility. Predictably, for someone who could count Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher among his most ardent fans, that responsibility was to maximise profits.
But does Friedman’s theory of corporate life still hold true? Of course, it depends on who you ask, but if there’s one current issue that doesn’t recognise theories (least of all liberal economic ones) it’s sustainability and climate change.
At our roundtable on sustainable procurement (a write-up of which you can find here) our very own columnist Neil Deverill told of a conversation he had with the chief executive of a large UK-based company, who said he couldn’t care less about the environment; his motivation was pure profit. Friedman would have been proud. Thankfully, the procurement professionals who attended our roundtable were substantially more passionate about sustainability than the CEO in Deverill’s story. And having spoken to several of the attendees since the event, relationships have been formed and a large amount of post-event knowledge-sharing and collaboration has occurred.
This is critical. The only way that business will make headway with sustainability is through collaboration, through sharing knowledge and best practice. Crucially, procurement and supply chain executives are in the best position of any corporate executive to take ownership of the issue. And by doing so, they will surely take yet another step towards the executive table. 
Recognising this, Procurement Leaders is launching a campaign to encourange greater knowledge-sharing among procurement professionals. Our Sustainable Supply Chains campaign will have three main objectives: to aid – and ultimately increase – collaboration among procurement and supply chain executives; to provide a platform for debate, and to push procurement further up the corporate agenda by taking ownership of the issue.
Our campaign kicks off with this article, where we talk to Sir Neville Simms, the founding chairman of the UK government’s Sustainable Procurement Task Force and current chairman of International Power. We also talk to David Simchi Levi, a 20-year veteran of the supply chain faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In this article, Richard Edwards investigates what can happen to the reputation of your company should it find itself on the wrong end of a sustainability story – it can be a particularly unpleasant experience, as Unilever recently discovered. And here, David Rabey, the chief procurement officer of the UK’s department for the environment, food and rural affairs, explains how the issue is one of business risk, and not one of tree hugging.
In this article, however, we kick off the collaboration. Here you can find research into the world’s largest 500 companies’ sustainable procurement policies. 68 of those 500 have dedicated policies and we provide links to them all, allowing you to see at a glance how other companies are approaching the issue. We hope you find it useful.
Several senior procurement experts are already on board. But the more procurement leaders we have taking part in the campaign, the more potential there will be for knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
If you are interested in taking part, email editor@procurementleaders.com.
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