Ethical Sourcing

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Ethical Sourcing
In the wake of swiftly changing business world demands for ethically sourced as well as sustainable products tremendously grown. By definition, ethical sourcing is the process that ensures products made are obtained through sustainable and responsible methods. Such include ensuring that all human rights are met, and the employees who make the products are paid a fair wage. Besides, it also ensures that the factories provide safe and clean environments to work in and all environmental and social aspect of production to the surrounding and to the workers are considered. Purchasing goods from suppliers who do not meet the above qualities and condition can be risky. For instance, if animal rights, human rights, environmental and safety abuse become associated with foreign manufacturing facility or the firm suppliers it can result in negative publicity and thus tarnish the reputation of the buyer. This can also lead to product boycotts, low employee morale, brand degradation. All these will adversely affect sales, stock price and thus profitability.
There are numerous benefits of ethical sourcing; such include; market image the buying habits of consumers are greatly influenced by how a company conducts business (Swink et al. 349). There is no any organization would admire negative publicity. Variation of any human right may have a far-reaching impact on the public image of an organization besides its market standing. The other benefit of ethical sourcing is the cost advantage.

When suppliers are sourced ethically the organization focuses on improved process control and product safety. This enables better monitoring of contract handling as well as suppliers scorecard. It is clear that ethical sourcing is a good practice because through it we are witnessing a significant shift towards transparency as well as the application of sophisticated, yet useful, tools that aid in continuous improvement assessment.
Work Cited
Swink, M., Melnyk, S. A., Cooper, M. B., & Hartley, J. L. (2017). Managing operations across the supply chain (pp. 344-352). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.