Читать книгу Supplier Diversity For Dummies - Kathey K. Porter - Страница 11

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting crystal clear on the nature of supplier diversity

Identifying the continued need for supplier diversity

Eyeing how external factors are changing the field

Exploring companies’ renewed investment in supplier diversity

Supplier diversity is a proactive business strategy that encourages buying from businesses that identify as belonging to a specific socioeconomic, historically disadvantaged, or underutilized demographic as suppliers, vendors, and contractors. The Small Business Administration, commonly called the SBA, classifies businesses in a number of categories. The most common are minority-owned or disadvantaged, women-owned, veteran-owned, and service-disabled-veteran owned. Corporations have expanded their definitions to also include LGBTQ to be more reflective of their local communities.

Supplier diversity has continued to progress from legislation to stabilize social unrest during the late 1960s to an economic imperative and a bona-fide management strategy. Supplier diversity programs recognize that when an organization buys products and services from suppliers that have been historically underutilized, it helps nurture and transform its own supply chain. Supplier diversity also gives organizations access to agile businesses with timely business solutions that allow them to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In this chapter, I cover what supplier diversity is (and isn’t) and why it’s still needed. I also identify some of the factors redefining supplier diversity and why organizations are recommitting to it.