Sustainability, Environmental Stewardship and CSR: The CPO’s Outside-In Agenda (Part 2A)

In this first installment of this Spend Matters PRO series (see Part 1A and Part 1B), we noted that a number of pressing issues are shaping procurement from the outside in, yet chief procurement officers (CPOs) are primarily still concerned with issues set by an inside-out agenda — that is, cost cutting and supply assurance targets mandated by upper management. Our PESTLE analysis of factors shaping the modern CPO agenda identified broad trends like economic instability, globalization, changing digital business strategies and the need to address corporate social responsibility (CSR) as areas that procurement organizations need to consider if they want to truly tap and manage the opportunities (and risks) offered by external supply markets.

Perhaps nowhere is this more readily apparent than with the topic of sustainability and environmental stewardship, the focus of today’s brief. The environment is an inseparable component of any business. It forms the platform layer off which all goods and services are produced, and, more fundamentally, the resulting ecosystem services from which humans benefit create the foundations for our species’ survival and quality of life. Due to multiple ongoing trends, however, the environment is changing, as are the ways that consumers, investors and governments think about our relationship to the environment.

Accordingly, Part 2 of this series on the CPO’s Conundrum examines the outside-in drivers pushing sustainability and environmental stewardship higher on the procurement agenda. It also explores recent examples of how businesses are integrating these issues into their supply management strategies, while simultaneously addressing them in balance with traditional procurement objectives, such as category management, supply base alignment and demand shaping.