Incorporating Sustainability into Supplier Development Process

Nowadays companies are more and more often expected to take responsibility for social and environmental impacts of their activities. When doing business social responsible company takes into consideration a wide range of its stakeholder’s expectations but also spread the social and environmental responsibility idea within the supply chain. Suppliers are the key stakeholders which directly influence the producer in terms of costs and quality of the offered products. However suppliers who offer high quality materials or components at an attractive price but at the same time not paying attention to their social and environmental impacts may devastate the buyer sustainability performance. Therefore the companies are trying to support suppliers in assuring their social and environmental responsibility as with this approach both sides benefit. In the study the authors used the case study method to present the proposal of integrating sustainability issues into already functioning supplier development process of a manufacturing company.