Tony Hines revisits the the Rana Plaza disaster 10 years on to ask has anything changed. Have supply chains developed a moral compass or could this happen again.
Have you ever wondered what it means to have an ethical supply chain? Ethics is about doing the right things, and when we think about doing the right things, it's incumbent on each of us to make judgement calls on the basis of moral judgments. Now, you might recall. That the founding father of economics, Adam Smith, was professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University, and in 1759 he wrote his first book, a theory of Moral Sentiments. So, for Smith morality came before economics.
Back in 2013, something strange happened at the Rana Plaza Garment factory in Bangladesh, which claimed 11,130 lives and injured thousands more people. It sent shock waves across the manufacturing industry, particularly in clothing and beyond. It was a historic failure of textile and garment manufacture, and people began to ask questions about the ethics of supply chain practises, not just in the textile and clothing industries, but in other industries too, where there are persistent human rights issues, corruption and environmental risks shifting the nature of the arrangements in those supply chains.
As supply chains have become more complex and global, it has been more difficult to get a handle on not just the legal aspects of supply chains but on the moral and ethical judgments that organisations make when they enter into supply chain arrangements. Consumers also began to ask questions and began to think about their purchasing decisions. So, it wasn't just organisational procurement that was at the heart of this, but it was also about choices that consumers make at the final steps in supply chains. Many people also believe that moral judgments are important but missing from management ethos, and they see management as simply rational decisions about the economics of business and not what is right or wrong in the process of doing business. And is that the missing ingredient when it comes to those firms that build better reputations, better brands and have better connexions with supply chain partners and indeed, with customers? Are the moral firms better at building relationships?
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About Tony Hines and the Chain Reaction Podcast – All About Supply Chain Advantage
I have been researching and writing about supply chains for over 25 years. I wrote my first book on supply chain strategies in the early 2000s. The latest edition is published in 2024 available from Routledge, Amazon and all good book stores. Each week we have special episodes on particular topics relating to supply chains. We have a weekly news round up every Saturday at 12 noon...
