Whether Ethical Sourcing A Source Of Competitive Advantage Dissertation

Whether Ethical Sourcing A Source Of Competitive Advantage - Dissertation Example Adopting the means of ethical manufacturing sourcing generally relates to a wider market audience and conformance with predefined ethical standards and principles that facilitate an organization to create a brand image and adhere to the corporate social responsibility. Ethical sourcing, however, is a hindrance that suppliers face in their normal course of business. For instance, organizations find it expensive to adopt ethical supply chain and distribution networks thus generally face lack of coalition among business and individual objectives. UK ethics law is essential in guiding principles for ethical sourcing since it conducts activities under the permissible range of the European law. Supply chain is a condition that enables an organization to operate in a more defined manner than the companies it competes with. It gains competitive advantage, which results in profits increase to that company in terms of margin enhancement, especially in the modern dynamic business world. It also serves as a valuable strategy as it involves all critical features that a strategy entails like conceptual and analytical decision making in terms of products, their time of delivery and the market to be targeted. Introduction Ethical sourcing is making sure that workers who are treated well and paid fair wages to work legal hours create the products being sourced in safe facilities. It also means that the supplier of the product is regarding the environment for the period of the production and manufacture of the product. Many companies may have various reasons as to why they use ethical sourcing. Others may claim to embrace ethical sourcing, but not completely and may not be practicing it in all their companies globally. Sourcing ethically is ensuring that honest values are met for the period of the manufacturing of products, as well as sourcing equipment. It is ensuring the participation of everyone in their products' development is paid a fair wage and working in safe and hygien ic conditions. It also means that employees work at reasonable hours, is not subject to unfairness and is of civilized working age. In this project, it will be found out whether Ethical sourcing is a source of competitive advantage to various companies owing to customers and consumers’ interest. Analysis of the strategies that different organizations like M&S and Co-op use to realize effective ethical sourcing is going to be done to show whether these ethical sourcing is beneficial or disadvantageous to them. Some of the United Kingdom Ethic laws that regulate functionalities of these companies will be discussed (Report Linker 2011). What supply chain is will be disclosed and whether it has any advantage as a competitive source (Kate & Anna 2004). Literature review This literature review explains ethical sourcing and develops arguments for and against its adoption by major retailing organizations. It is acknowledged that different countries have different rules, regulations a nd laws governing sourcing (Lynn 2007). This dissertation, however, focuses on how major retailers source products for selling in the developed economies of the UK, EU and US. Whilst the overall objective of this review is to, critically, examine ethical sourcing and its adoption by some firms (but not by others), it will help develop a model that can be used to see how â€Å"ethical† organizations actually are. Sourcing ethically, in a scholarly capacity, means the upholding of at most moral and decent values during the process of developing commodities. It is a perfect blend of sustainability, values imbibed in a business practice and social responsibility