Fair Chain (Opinion‪)‬

Neil Rogers, BT's chief procurement officer explains how ethical sourcing can help businesses to avoid the embarrassing PR suffered by Gap, when it was revealed that some of its garments were made in sweat shops in the developing world. He also paints a picture of the near future in which consumers will be able to pick up an item in a shop and, by simply typing its code into their mobile phone, get details of all of the companies in that item's supply chain. Let's step forward in time a few years. You're shopping online. As a consumer, you might be visiting a retailer's website to buy groceries or clothes for home delivery. Just as likely, though, you might be looking to open a new bank account or buy another service. As a business professional, you might be looking around for someone to run your call centre or develop some software at a competitive rate. Obviously, factors such as price, quality and delivery date are important. That's the sort of information you'd expect to be able to see on screen already. But you're just as interested in where what you'll be buying comes from and how those who produced it were treated.