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Best current practices in purchasing - The Apparel Industry

Date posted: 2 Aug 2010 - Category: report

Organisation: As You Sow

Description: The report presents how apparel industry leaders have made changes to their purchasing practices - and even their corporate structures - in continued efforts to improve working conditions in factories and to reap the benefits of having an effectively managed supply chain. The report is based on interviews with seven companies: Gap Inc., Jones Apparel, Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Nordstrom, Phillips-Van Heusen, and Timberland. These companies were identified by members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility as innovative leaders in Purchasing Practices.

Document type:  pdf

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Our comments:  This well written and concise report highlights some key areas in how corporate purchasing practices may lead to unintended consequences in the supply chain. It shows how some leading companies have addressed the problem by changing their management approach to reduce bad buying behaviours that add pressure on suppliers. It provides a useful insight for those needing to understand how they can change their systems to avoid some of the highly publicised negative impact of finding your company in the spotlight for your supplier's bad practices.

Tags: Supply chain, Child labour, Sweatshops

Link to resource:  Best current practices in purchasing - The Apparel Industry

Romanticizing the Poor

Date posted: 15 Sep 2009 - Category: comment

Author: Aneel Karnani

Organisation: Standford Graduate School of Business

Description: Market solutions to poverty are very much in vogue. These solutions, which include services and products targeting consumers at the "bottom of the pyramid," portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful. It allows corporations, governments, and nonprofi ts to deny this vulnerable population the protections it needs. Romanticizing the poor also hobbles realistic interventions for alleviating poverty.

Document type:  pdf

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Our comments:  Karnani is one of the most thoughtful and challenging writers on the role of business in alleviating poverty. He has been quick to challenge what he sees as wishful thinking in a lot of the bottom-of-the-pyramid texts of the day, and whether you agree with his viewpoint or not these are well-argued, well-referenced points that need to be considered carefully. He is one of the few original, critical voices engaging the debate that are really helping to test and shape thinking, and if you are interested in this area you should read this, and his other (referenced in this document) writings on the subject.

Tags: Marketplace, Responsible marketing, Sweatshops

Link to resource:  Romanticizing the Poor

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