What is strategic sourcing?

What is the difference between purchasing and strategic sourcing?

What is ethical sourcing, and why would firms do it$?$

What do business ethics, utilitarianism, and rights and duties have to do with ethical sourcing?

What are some common practices or activities of ethical sourcing?

What are some of the risks of ethical sourcing? How about the potential advantages? Do you think ethical sourcing is a good practice? Why?

In what ways is corporate social responsibility different from business ethics?

How could purchasing goods from suppliers in developing countries be risky? How should firms reduce this risk?

What is a fair trade product? Could farmers in the United States make fair trade products?

What is sustainable sourcing, and how does it differ from ethical sourcing and from green purchasing?

What are the benefits of sustainable sourcing? Can firms actually make money from sustainable sourcing? Do you think it is a good practice? Why?

What are the three P$\text{'}$s$?$ What do they have to do with sustainability?

How could you apply sustainability to a supply chain?

Describe some sustainable and ethical things your university is doing.

How are ethical and sustainable sourcing policies designed in an organization?

How is the U$.$S$.$ government getting involved in sustainability requirements?

What are innovative and functional products? Can firms buy functional products in an ethical way? A sustainable way? What about innovative products?

What are the benefits of obtaining ethical and sustainable certifications? Why would a buyer want its suppliers to have these certifications?

What advantages do company$-$designed supplier certification programs have over industry certifications like ISO $9000?$

What is supply base rationalization, and what are its advantages and disadvantages?

What is outsourcing? How is it different from purchasing? Would a firm ever want to outsource a core product or process? Why or why not?

When would firms want to insource a product or process?

Do companies outsource for ethical or sustainable reasons? If so$,$ provide some examples. How might this impact a firm's reputation?

What is sourcing's role in value engineering, and what benefits does this give to the firm?

Why is early supplier involvement a good way to integrate the supply chain?

Why would suppliers want to be involved on a buyer's new product development team?

Describe the differences between vendor$-$managed inventories and co$-$managed inventories, and when it might be advisable to do either of them.

What is the difference between supplier management and strategic alliance development?

If your firm had a large number of strategic supplier alliances, what would be the best way to manage them?

What makes supplier alliances fail? How can firms reduce the failure rate?

Describe the differences between integrative and distributive negotiations, and when each should be used.

Why might second$-$ and even third$-$tier suppliers be important to the focal firm?

What is a common method for developing second$-$tier suppliers?

If your firm had $500$ suppliers and they each had $100$ suppliers, how many second$-$tier suppliers would your firm have? What if your firm reduced its supply base to twenty?

What are some typical supplier rewards and punishments that a buyer could use?

If you work for a company, describe how it rewards and punishes its suppliers. Do you think appropriate methods are being used? Why or why not?

What is benchmarking? What are some different ways you could use benchmarking to improve your performance at school?

Why would a firm want to monitor its own purchasing performance?

Describe several successful ethical sourcing practices.

How could a company use benchmarking and performance measurement to improve its ethical and sustainable purchasing practices?