With the best of intentions, companies up and down supply chains experiment with isolated efforts to improve sustainability only to encounter a long string of unanticipated consequences, often in the form of financial, social, or environmental costs. That's partly because most firms respond in a piecemeal way to pressure from customers, shareholders, boards, employees, governments, and NGOs. For instance, they, demand that suppliers change their materials to environmentally friendly ones or move manufacturing closer to end markets to reduce emissions from transportation. And they tweak their own operations by using compact fluorescent lamps, recycling more of their materials, and so on. Lee's research shows that it's much more effective to take a holistic approach to sustainability and make broader structural changes, as shirt manufacturer Esquel, steel-maker Posco, and others have done. Such changes can include reinventing processes, developing new kinds of relationships with business partners, and even collaborating with competitors to achieve scale. Stakeholders increasingly hold corporations accountable for supply chain partners' actions, as we've learned from widely publicized recalls of tainted pet food and lead-laden toys. Clearly, sustainability is a competitive concern. The core managers overseeing your supply chain must own and tackle it as aggressively as they do cost, quality, speed, and dependability.
