Assessment Background

Businesses around the world are increasingly being held to account for environmental and human rights abuses in their supply chains. Select an organisation that has been exposed for having environmental or social malpractices within their supplier base. This can be a first, second or third tier supplier to your organisation.

Hint: Look for an organisation (REAL LIFE CASE STUDY) that engaged a supplier(s) that were found to have:

child labour, forced labour, abusive labour practices or other human rights issues in their operations;

contributed to negative environmental impacts such as impacting access to land, water or other resources, environmental degradation or other environmental or social impacts.

Your group will act in the role of the Procurement Department at your nominated Organisation.

Assessment Scenario - (based on your chosen organisation)

Breaking news across the country is that your organisation has engaged in environment or social malpractices through its association with a major supplier. An investigation has uncovered that your supplier has engaged in some very poor practices. Your company is on the front page of all the major newspapers and trending on all the major news stations. People are outraged. A social media campaign has kicked off encouraging consumers to boycott your company and sign a Change. Org petition demanding the resignation of your Board.

The integrity of your supply base is being questioned and the reputation of your company is at stake. Customers are threating to boycott your products and investors are demanding answers. You know that your Procurement team will be required to provide answers to the business.

An email alert pops up on your phone. It is your CEO demanding that your team provide a briefing to the Board first thing Monday. This will be the first formal briefing that the Board has had on the matter.

Action Required:

For your chosen organisation, you are required to make presentation providing a brief outline of the incident that has occurred and the procurement practices that did, or did not, contribute to the outcome. The main focus of your presentation will be to develop a set of recommendations that the Procurement function will implement in response to the incident. Consider short, medium and long term actions as well as the impacts of any recommendations (both internal (eg cost or resources) and external (eg social, political or economic).

You are also required to submit a paper briefing the Board prior to your presentation. The paper will set out a brief background, key considerations, strategic options and a recommendation (see 'Structure of Briefing Paper' on page 3 for further information).

Reference Material

It is recommended that you link your group recommendations to the ISO for Sustainable Procurement (ISO 20400:2017) or similar Sustainable Procurement initiatives (such as BS 8903:2010, or movements such as the United Nations Global Compact). These will be useful references for group presentations.

Note: To access the Sustainable Procurement (ISO 20400:2017), please access via the link for 'Subject Readings' available from the Moodle site or UOW library. Select the link 'SAI Global'. Enter the document number '20400' into the search box, and ensure you select 'ISO - International Organization for Standardization', from the 'Publisher' drop down box. You may be required to register to access the Standard. Contact the Library Helpdesk for further information.

Some ideas to get your started:

Questions that you teams may consider as part of your review include:

What was the issue that occurred, and was it preventable? What are the major ethical concerns associated with the issue?

How did procurement practises and policies contribute to the incident? What were the failings? What could, or should, Procurement have done differently? Consider the literature on Sustainable Procurement and leading practices in the area.

Identify the main recommendations that you can implement. How feasible is each option? Consider timing, cost, resourcing, success factors, impact for each option.

What are the implications and trade-offs associated with your chosen recommendation? Consider the barriers towards implementing these concerns.

What is your recommendation to the Board?

STRUCTURE OF BRIEFING PAPER

The purpose of the Briefing Paper is to familiarise the Board with purpose of your presentation, prior to it occurring.

The following are some typical headings to help with structuring the briefing paper and suggestions of what should be included under each heading.

1. Issue (this is the topic or purpose of the briefing)

A concise statement of the issue, proposal or problem. This section should explain in one or two lines why the Briefing Paper matters to the Board. It sets out in the form of a question or a statement what the rest of the note is about.

2. Background

Provide relevant background information on the issue. This could include a brief summary of the history of the topic and what the current state of the matter, issue, situation, etc. You could consider what led up to this problem or issue.

3. Key Considerations

A discussion of key considerations (including implementation concerns, financial considerations, stakeholder impacts, and possible unanticipated consequences). While you will have to decide what to include and what to leave out, this section should be as unbiased as possible. Your aim is to present all the details required for the Board to be informed or to make an informed decision. Keep the Board's needs uppermost in your mind when selecting and presenting the facts. Remember to substantiate any statements with evidence and to double check your facts. Competing interests or limited resources could be included in this section.

4. Options

A concise description either of the options and sometimes their pros and cons or of what will happen next. It is in the key considerations and/or options sections where you could consider the different areas affected by this proposal. Option one should always be status quo.

5. Recommendations

This is the section that the Board will look at first so you need to be concise and clear about what you want the Board to get from the Briefing. It is important not to introduce any new material and recommendations should be supported by the facts that you have presented in the other sections of the Briefing.