Question

What are some risks of ethical sourcing? How about the potential advantages? Do you think ethical sourcing is a good practice?

Answer 1

When we consider an ethical sourcing initiative for the supply chain of the company, we can say that the following challenges can be observed.

CHALLENGES
1. Initial change movement and maintaining the required processes.
2. Can increase the lead time to the customers if the company is not able to source form nearby suppliers.
3. Maintaining supplier relationship might become hard since the current supplier would be needed to be changed to bring about a suitable sourcing process.

BENEFITS
1. Long term cost benefits are observed through ethical and sustainable sourcing.
2. The brand image and customer perceptions can be improved.
3. The company can easily maintain adherence to the values and standards of the industry.

I do believe that ethical sourcing is good practice once the company can develop the structure to the full extent. What this means is that while the initial change process might be laborious to undergo for some companies with a large, well-established supply chain, the long term benefits it brings to the table are immense, making it so that our understanding of the need for maintenance of the ethical procurement and sourcing process become more comfortable to conduct as well as suitable in the long run.