Socially responsible sourcing: Choosing suppliers and partners that align with your values

Socially responsible sourcing of suppliers and partners is a key component of practising corporate social responsibility. Responsible sourcing of business suppliers and partners involves choosing suppliers and partners that align with your own personal values and checking for supply chain transparency, among other steps that we will discuss below.

Corporate social responsibility meaning

Choosing suppliers and partners that align with your values is a component of practising corporate social responsibility. But what exactly is corporate social responsibility?

Corporate social responsibility within events helps to ensure that the event industry is having a positive impact on the world around it. Corporate social responsibility also includes practising environmental sustainability and employee well-being amongst other factors.

How can you find suppliers and partners that align with your business values?

Operating with ethical business conduct and choosing the right suppliers for your event can be achieved that bit more easily with these simple steps:

Determine Your Business Values

It perhaps should go without saying but it is vital to have your business values solidified before you look for them in potential suppliers and partners. You should decide what your business stands for as a whole, including attitudes towards fair labour practices and human rights.

Check for supply chain transparency

When looking for suppliers and partners that align with your business values, you need to look out for businesses that are transparent about their practices and values. If you are not finding companies that are transparent about their environmental sustainability practices, for instance, then you cannot be sure that their values align with yours, making it an uncertain partnership. Secrecy about business values is very often a negative sign about their ethical policies (or lack thereof).

Revisit your suppliers and partners on a regular basis

Even if a sponsor or partner looks like they align with your morals and company ethos when you first look to work with them, it is important to ensure that this is something that the company maintains — that it was not a temporary pretence of shared business values. It is also natural that what you want out of a business partner might change over time, and your business partner might also want to switch up how they operate, so checking in with these sponsors regularly will ensure that there is still a mutual goal orientation amongst you.

Practise supplier diversity

Ethical sourcing of suppliers and partners also involves ensuring that there is diversity in place regarding the range of suppliers and partners you select. Of course, you want suppliers and partners that align with your own morals and business values, but you should also consider your business values and event inclusivity into practise when selecting your partners.