What would you do when confronted with a supply chain ethical dilemma?

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the July-August 2019 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

July-August 2019

If you’re a long-time reader of Supply Chain Management Review, you’re familiar with Larry Lapide’s “Insights” column. Typically, Larry is writing about the many facets of planning, but occasionally, he takes on a provocative topic. One year, he questioned whether it was necessary to be a Top 25 supply chain leader, especially if in your industry, good enough gets the job done.

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The supply chain is like a river that runs through our world. In some organizations the supply chain is visible and almost tangible. In these organizations it appears that each person knows how and where his or her job fits into the supply chain, where the materials or processes came from and where his or her work goes next. In such organizations, even large ones like the military, you can almost see the whole supply chain functioning.

In other organizations the supply chain is more diffuse or obscure. Processes and products are functional and connect from and to each other. However, not all employees of the organization are aware of why they do what they do or how that connects further in the organization. Sometimes in these organizations timelines are still met, but time is often wasted.

Sometimes organizations become so focused on the how and what of their supply chain they forget to make the why front of mind for their employees. Compliance is critical in the supply chain, even more so in some industries like those with government contracts or pharmaceutical manufacturers. However, ethics is even higher up the food chain than compliance. Ethics is embedded in our own values and the values of the organization—ethics is the way of what we do. It is possible to be compliant and not ethical and those who enforce compliance may sometimes come to a place where they still don’t know what to do next.

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