What is CSR / ESG?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Environmental Social Governance (ESG) as it is now known, are the buzzwords of business today.

The basic definition is that of an organisation’s commitment to best practice with regard to employees, customers, suppliers and the environment. Some aspects of a company’s CSR are compulsory as laid down by legislative and regulatory requirements. Others are acquired through joining a professional body that sets professional codes of practice or they can be completely voluntary, if for example, a corporation should wish to enhance the public perception of what may previously have been a compliance based approach.

In recent years, various human and environmental exploitations have been exposed. For example, as early as 2008, Panorama exposed the use of child labour in Indian factories supplying Primark and a few years later, Greenpeace released a report on how toxic dyes used in Chinese factories to manufacture clothing for brands such as Nkie and Pmua are not only dangerous for employees what with causing rashes and respiratory infections, but heavily pollute the rivers they are expelled into on a daily basis. For reasons such as these, one hopes that organisations will increasingly adopt a proactive, positive and integrity based approach.

A G lobal Reach

An organisation having a climate, environmental, sustainability or CSR policy will mean wide ranging operational implications for its professional purchasers. Whilst it is one of the main functions of a professional purchaser, whether in the public or private sector to keep costs as low as possible and to obtain the best value for money, this must not be at the expense of the cost of ethical considerations. These ethical considerations begin in the immediate office and branch out globally.

Greta Thunberg has been vociferous on the subject of sustainability and green issues and organisations such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil have also been protesting and bringing these issues into the public consciousness by gluing themselves to roadways, causing maximum disruption to gain attention to their cause and in the case of the latter organisation, throw tomato soup at Van Gogh paintings in the National Gallery.
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/kids-club/cool-kids/general-kids-club/greta-thunberg-facts/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Greta-Thunberg
https://rebellion.global/
https://juststopoil.org/
The United Nations or U.N. also has a fierce climate agenda and King Charles, formerly known as Prince as well as David Attenborough, have been talking about this matters since the 1970s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations
https://www.un.org/en/

One aspect is that of equal opportunities and the outlawing of discrimination when recruiting or promoting staff within the purchasing department. Factors such as race, disability or sexual orientation should not be factors in rejecting a candidate and legislation such as the Race Relations Act 1976, Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007 exist to guide in such matters. There are other common media of discrimination and various acts to disallow these. The original protected categories have now been expanded to include all of the following:
• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation
It is also prudent for any organisation to keep abreast of developments in matters such as ‘positive discrimination’ and ‘affirmative action’ as various minority pressure groups seek redress for what they see as underrepresentation in certain organisations and professions e.g. females and ethnic minorities within the Metropolitan Police Force which produced its first ever CSR policy only in 2010.

The diversity of suppliers expands on this theme, whereby a professional manager must ensure all suppliers of goods and services he or she chooses are a proportionate mix of majority and minority groups. This is not yet a legislative requirement exactly, however there is a burgeoning interest and expectation in such programs as they are seen to foster a balanced economic growth.