Accenture and back in 2010 surveyed more than 700 global executives, from which 93% have firmly admitted the prominence of sustainability in insuring the future success of their companies. Accordingly, the vision of integrating sustainable strategies into companies’ strategic endeavors is in the heart of most global corporations, but varies between those who just have it on papers, partially applied it and companies that lead the domain of sustainable strategies similar to Dow Chemical, Nestle, General Electric and Walmart. The majority of organizations that work on generating value out of sustainability will initially consider the required measures to increase profits on capital, which commonly signifies decreasing operating expenses via enhancing the management of natural resource, similar to waste and energy usage. Corporations can as well work on cutting unnecessary operational expenses through methodically supervising their value chains. Moreover, organizations might bring more value thru enhancing workers’ motivation or retention by embracing activities with sustainable nature or through increasing prices or attaining greater share of market by employing current or new sustainable products (Bertels 2010).

Organizations that thoroughly follow sustainability are as well repeatedly reexamining their business portfolios for the sake to define the probable influence of developments, similar to present or probable environmental or trade regulations, which might lead to different development of market prospects. Waste management, for instance, rediscovered itself as a supplier of incorporated ecological contributions through totaling waste to energy and waste decrease solutions to its portfolio of offerings. Corporations correspondingly scrutinize strictly for unfulfilled necessities generated through sustainability developments in accordance with their strategies, and consequently recognize probable consumer segments. While on the other hand, and speaking of the range of accompanied risks as part of this process, then the improved management of risks that appear from sustainability concerns commences with identifying significant threats of operational disturbances from resource shortage, climate change, or public concerns, similar to commercial boycotts or interruptions in receiving clearance to undertake business operations (Bonini 2011).

For global corporations to develop a sustainable supply chain, they should consider some crucial constraints. The initial and most significant one is the complete backing of the executive team and board of directors, to be followed with a series of changes and enrichments on corporate procedures related to ecological enhancement, as well as to conform to legal ecological necessities, apply to ISO 14001 certification and select adequate suppliers based on ecological benchmarks. Moreover, the management should furnish the atmosphere to cooperate jointly along with suppliers in order to comply with ecofriendly objectives, in addition to allocate adequate resources to develop internal techniques and tools to asses suppliers’ credibility based on ecological standards.

Additionally, the executive team has to cooperatively work with current and potential customers in order to achieve eco-designs and undertake cleaner methods during construction. Furthermore, sustainable supply chain adoption includes the procurement of green technologies and applications, with construction designs that recycle, decrease, reclaim or reprocess energy, resources, or components, along with layouts that decrease or dodge the usage of poisonous or dangerous components (Cucchiella & Koh 2012). Nevertheless, any change experience is going to be encountered with different set of challenges, which will require a solid and proven change management methodology in place. Accordingly, it is essential to recognize the main burdens for adopting sustainable supply chain prior accepting the change. The first burden will be generated from general public, second from government regulations while the third from clients. Without ignoring that the staff working circumstances, ecological and green concerns, corporate social responsibility and sustainability are the main present barriers in front of the sought mission (Malviya & Kant 2017).

References:

Bertels, S. (2010) ‘Embedding Sustainability in Organizational Culture’. Simon Fraser University & Network for Business Sustainability. Available online from: http://nbs.net/wp-content/uploads/Executive-Report-Sustainability-and-corporate-culture.pdf, (Accessed: December 12 2017).

Bonini, S. & Gorner, S. (2011) ‘The Business Of Sustainability: McKinsey Global Survey Results’. McKinsey. Available online from: http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/the-business-of-sustainability-mckinsey-global-survey-results, (Accessed: December 12 2017).

Cucchiella, F. & Koh, L. (2012) ‘Green Supply Chain: How Do Carbon Management and Sustainable Development Create Competitive Advantage for the Supply Chain?’ N.P.: [Bradford, England]: Emerald Group Pub., 2012. University of Liverpool Catalogue, EBSCOhost, (Accessed: December 12 2017).

Malviya, R. & Kant, R. (2017) ‘Modeling The Enablers Of Green Supply Chain Management’, Benchmarking An International Journal, 24, 2, pp. 536-568, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, (Accessed: December 12 2017).