ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by explaining how many of the problems which civil society campaigns have tried to address are to do with the absence of an effective legal or moral framework for globalised supply chains. Much formal ethical purchasing or ethical sourcing at bigger companies developed initially as a response to the emergence of civil society campaigning and tragedies like Rana Plaza, but now many companies have highly developed ethical purchasing programmes of their own, often driven by risk management.
As elsewhere in this book, collective actions, both positive and negative, have proliferated in this space. These include corporate programmes like the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, government-sponsored programmes like the Ethical Trading Initiative, and multi-stakeholder initiatives like the Better Cotton Initiative.
This chapter also talks about how formal audit programmes and transparency have emerged as ways of managing supply chain workers’ rights issues, but problems remain. Audits and transparency also play a role in environmental or green purchasing, which is also sometimes known as sustainable procurement or green supply chain management.
This chapter ends by exploring how the development or more radical approaches to cost and pricing in relation to ethics will become increasingly essential.
