Corporate Social Responsibility, Safety, and Procurement

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
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UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE
19th September 2018
Corporate Social Responsibility, Safety, and Procurement
Introduction
The combination of safety, corporate social responsibility and procurement is referred to as Sustainable Procurement (SP) since it involves the integration of social and environmental factors into the supply chain and procurement systems. This is a holistic approach that transcends the economic factors as it considers the whole life cost, possible risks, success indicators and most importantly, the overall impact to the society (Crespin-Mazet & Dontenwill, 2012). This kind of decision making approach requires an integrated procurement strategy that captures financial value, performance management, corporate as well as community priorities. The paper evaluates the issue of corporate social responsibility, safety and procurement and more specifically evaluates the current and future trends in socially responsible procurement using case examples.
Analysis of the Socially Responsible Procurement Trend
Currently, organizations are mandated to adopt sustainable procurement practices unlike in the past when it was voluntary. Sustainable procurement can be defined as the process by which institutions, organizations, and governments procure supplies and other services while considering their social, economic and environmental implications (Meehan & Bryde, 2011). On the other hand, environmental aspects entail evaluating the long-term effect of the supplies or assets on the entire lifecycle. In contrast, social aspects consider factors such as poverty eradication, material sustainability, inequality, human rights and supplier working conditions among others.
The trend toward socially responsible procurement is going to continue into the future and could even become a de facto business standard in some industries. Thus, it is expected that more companies will adopt sustainable procurement practices in a bid to show their commitment to the public good through the use of fair business practices. Secondly, this trend is likely to continue because sustainable procurement is no longer a voluntary initiative, but a regulatory requirement in the U.S (Walker & Brammer, 2012). In the U.S, the number of socially responsible procurement legislation has increased. These legislations are likely to compel more organizations to adopt sustainable procurement practices in the future due to compliance requirement. One such example is the Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals regulation passed in the United States. This law prohibits U.S companies from sourcing minerals from conflict regions since the proceeds are used to perpetuate armed conflicts, whereas the CaliforniaTransparencyAct of 2012 mandates businesses to disclose their suppliers (Walker, Miemczyk, Johnsen & Spencer, 2012). In...