Procurement Policy for Sustainable Development

Definition

Procurement policies reference actions by a multinational corporation through supply chains. Often reporting of corporate sustainability is limited to the assessment of sustainability within a corporation’s own operations and excludes supply chain actions. However, pricing pressures, regulatory variations, and externalizing of costs are the very basis for outsourcing corporate activities. In employing a supply chain, a company can limit responsibility for sustainability and profit through the supply chains actions. For this reason, procurement policies that include sustainability parameters can promote and enable sustainability in vulnerable and poor communities, which are often those most exploited by supply chain operations, particularly in developing countries.

Introduction

The effects of anthropogenic activities on the environment are increasingly evident and can be observed in environmental degradation stemming from pollution to natural resource exploitation. There is...