Managing your supply chain is a complex enough business in today’s globalized and commodified world. With factors such as international regulations and the development perspective, ensuring fair value and sustainability throughout the supply chain is an arduous task.
But it’s also clear that dealing with the supply chain can provide a strategic opportunity to learn more about both current and future markets and offers huge rewards to all involved. Many companies have started to look more strategically at supply chain management as a source of innovation.
Why then, isn’t sustainable chain management happening more? One key reason is the absence of “low-hanging fruit”, where cost savings can balance efforts to be sustainable. Nordic Partnership’s Managing Director, Michael Brinch Pedersen explains, -Sustainable supply chain management offers a huge potential to sustainable development and can add value if capitalised through markets. But the immediate benefits and tangible results are currently hard for both business and NGO’s to see.”
The Nordic Partnership’s vision is to make sustainability a rewarding business, and is currently undertaking a series of projects that aim to identify and understand some of dilemmas and barriers to sustainable supply chain management and other business issues.
It seems that partnerships have a key role to play in overcoming these dilemmas as engaging with other stakeholders can create the momentum necessary to make sustainable supply chain management a worthwhile process. The survey illustrates the willingness shown by NGO’s and business to create partnerships that can help address the issues and open up dialogue with other important stakeholders, such as governments/authorities and investors, in order to instigate changes in the long term.