1. Information article and author
This is a reflection of the Supply Chain Management Review of SonaliRammohan “Toward a
More Responsible Supply Chain: The HP Story”, SCMR July/August 2009, page 34-41.
SonaliRammohan is an Assistant Director at the Stanford Socially and Environmentally
Responsible Supply Chain (SER) Program.
Introduction
In the supply chain management review „Toward a More Responsible Supply Chain: The HP
Story“, the author SonaliRammohan characterizes the work of HPs Social and Environmental
Responsibility program, how it could be implemented in companies supply chains and what it
should aiming on.
Referring tothe author, in many supply chains workers are faced with cruel conditions.
Because of longer supply chains nowadays, the issue about maintaining more responsibility
within them is getting more important.
HP, an electronically company, developed a program to improve these conditions, with the
aim to achieve long-lasting changes. Since this program is active, things changed but it is still
challenging to implement its ideas in the every market. According to Rammohan, there are,
for instance, still problems to push these changes upstream that means a lack of
communication between two suppliers within the supply chain. Nevertheless, the program is
succeeding, not only because of he program, but also because responsibility gets more
demanded on customer sides.
HPs work according to responsible supply chains, are highly demanded and provide training
program for suppliers, for instance, to interact with several stakeholders to reach positive
change or forging new partnerships to achieve long-lasting improvements.
Furthermore, the author gives on the basis of HPs work additional approaches how to speed
up the success of their program. To convince companies that the SER program will not only
improve working condition, but also their outcome, so that this program could provide a win-
win situation forthe firm.
Rammohan provides the reader also with a forecast about which steps must still be made to
maintain and reach capabilities of building long-lasting changes for a stable and responsible
supply chain.
Evaluation
Hewlett Packard’s found in Chinese suppliers employees working under very bad conditions.
“… factory workers were taking turns using the same dormitory bed – one person slept while
the other worked.” According to Rammohan HP prefers to resolve the issues and preserve the
relationship with the suppliers instead of dropping them. Rammohan supports her statement in
a five-pronged program. She gives very good examples, which show that it was quite hard to
convince the suppliers to follow the program of SER. Apparently; managers thought
employees wanted to work as much as they can to earn more money. What the author does
well in our opinion is she shows on senior managers how they thought before and how they
think after the SER program. However, we think she tries to argue only from one point of
view. Rammohan shows a lot of positive sides of the program; obviously it is positive to help
employees work under better circumstances. But what we miss is the relation to other MNEs.
How do they think about the program? Is really every company interested in such programs?
In addition, she gives a very good example about the funds, “some suppliers think everything
we ask for is going to involve a cost increase.” Actually, we do think the same way. SER is a

2. big organization with needs loads of time to research and then to convince the suppliers,
which leads to high costs for a company. We would rather suggest dropping the suppliers and
search for a supplier that treats the employees better.
A question the review answers is how the program affected positively on the major
nonconformances. According to the author SER achieved a lot of improvements, like in Latin
America has been improvements in injury and illness. HP wants to develop industry-wide
SER standards, it might have several benefits such as sharing of resources and knowledge and
engaging companies upstream can strengthen weak links in the supply chain. “… SACOM
and Chicony report that they are starting to see greater trust between management and
workers.” So in the view of the author HP expects that suppliers represent 75% of its
procurement spending will be using SER programs with their own suppliers. Further, HP
wants to get partners with sub-tier suppliers. However, this step includes industry specific
training session, what obviously means loads of money. The first thing we are wondering
about is, where do you get all the money?Anyway, we are much more interested in another
point of view. Rammohan is part of the SER and she shows all the good points and how they
affected to five suppliers. For us it is still unclear what other companies do. Do they have
such a similar organization, whichoccurs for the social and environmental responsibility?
Conclusion
We think the article is rather weak according to such an important topic of human rights. On
one hand the author gives good reasons to join the SER. But she tells the whole story from
one point of view. I would be interested in other companies, what they do and how do they
deal with the problems of the suppliers. However, we have learned a lot out of the article. We
know there is a company who is not just interested in own profit. HP wants to have a good
relationship to all their suppliers and even to the suppliers of suppliers. But we still have
questions to ask the author.
Questions
1. Do you think it is at the end more effective to invest heavily into suppliers to improve
their working principles than just drop them?
2. Do you think that it is possible to vanish all irresponsible supply chains and in
contrary establish a neutral organization like the WTO for the trade?
3. So we know how HP thinks and what they do. But what do other companies do to
avoid violation of human rights? Or do they just do not care about the work
environment of the suppliers and are only interested in own profits?