Original Source: Linkedin
“How much is your socially responsible supply chain worth?
… 30 billion dollars – would say Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, conceivably the company with the nr. 1 global supply chain, “and much more……” he might add considering the brand value of Apple.
Every sustainability practitioner can relate to challenges in assigning measurable value to social policies and social risks in business. These measures are referred sometimes to as ESG (Environmental, Social Governance) factors, other times as “good and fuzzy things”. Until fuzzy things happened, that is.
As Nike experienced over three decades ago when consumers revolted against working conditions in Nike’ facilities in Thailand. The damage for Nike was measured in immediate sales drop, but more importantly – the Nike brand was tarnished significantly, perhaps forever. As demonstrates the phrase “Nike’s sweatshops”, which became a common and generic expression in business vocabulary.
The late Steve Jobs discovered rather painfully in San Francisco during the 2010 All Things D – D8conference how social factors, for which Apple was not legally responsible, presented very real and very material risk. At that conference, Steve Jobs’ goal was to dazzle the crowd of loyal Apple followers with then revolutionary features of the iPhone 3. Instead, he found himself on unfamiliar territory defending the manufacturing strategy and social policies of Apple, and arguing that “Apple does not support sweatshops”. Before the D8 conference, on June 6, 2010 The New Your Times broke the story about suicides among employees at Foxconn facilities. Foxconn has been, and still is, the largest private contract manufacturer in China. At that time, its 300,000 employees had been assembling products for many American and global companies including Dell, HP, Samsung, IBM, Microsoft and yes, Apple…”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-best-good-enough-wanda-lopuch?trk=prof-post
Contributors: Open SourceCategories: Industry Articles, SIG U Resource
SRC Type: Sourcing Management, Sustainability