SIG University Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) program graduate Yukta Ramanan shares her unique perspective of ethical business and sourcing practices from the next generation of sourcing professionals.
My name is Yukta Ramanan, and I'm 17 years old. Now you may be asking yourself: why is a teenager training to receive a Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) credential? The question is entirely valid. Unlike most people taking this course, I have little experience working professionally within the field of sourcing. What I possess, however, is a uniquely Gen Z perspective on the future of sourcing, and my motive for taking the CSP course was to learn how to bring my vision to fruition.
The Sourcing Industry Group's CSP training taught me a great deal about business finance and strategic value chain analysis. A lesson I found particularly eye-opening was centered on ethics within supply chains. A business must define company-specific ethical standards to decide on a moral issue. Determining what is ethical, which varies broadly, usually follows five approaches.
The first approach is utilitarianism, which deems that a company must make a decision that produces the most significant balance of good over harm to society. In business, the most significant ethical corporate action would be to bring good to stakeholders, which constitute the most substantial part of the market. Through statistics, cost-benefit analysis, and marginal utility, businesses make utilitarian decisions that benefit stakeholders, even if they come at the expense of the smaller demographics they influence.
The second method of ethical consideration is the rights approach, where an ethical action is defined as one that protects the moral rights of those impacted. A company's ethical actions cannot impose on the human rights of employees, customers, or communities. While the rights approach is grounded in equality, several large corporations have supply chains imbued in human rights abuses. For example, the chocolate company, Nestle, has been caught using child labor to cut down production costs. Blatant inconsideration for anti child labor regulations violates Nestle's rights approach.
The fairness of justice approach details that an individual must treat all humans somewhat based on justifiable standards. Companies must treat all employees and customers equally, with no discrimination based on race, gender, sexuality, or socioeconomic condition.
A company can also use the common good approach to make ethical decisions. This approach states that what is suitable for individuals is intrinsically intertwined with what is good for society due to shared institutions. This approach, like others, requires respect and compassion for all members of society, especially the most vulnerable. Companies that follow the typical good process believe they have the ability, and the responsibility, to serve the communities under them. Thus, they aim to provide goods and services to their customers and ensure safe working conditions and environmental sustainability in their supply chains.
The last is the virtues approach, which declares that a company must strive for certain ideals to reach its highest potential.
Once a business determines the approach that works best for its goals, it must work to integrate it with its existing frameworks. Many companies are focused on maximizing profit and are not concerned about factors outside traditional corporate success. Others use the stakeholder interest theory to guide company decisions. If businesses follow the minimum moral approach, they believe that while profit must be prioritized, harm to others should be avoided or addressed.
For example, if a company pollutes a water body by establishing a factory, they are responsible for preventing other negative externalities by compensating injured parties. Last, but perhaps the most ambitious theory, is corporate citizenship, which cites that companies should go out of their ways to solve social problems, even if they didn't play a known role in the issue's development. As consumers have grown to value sustainable marketplaces, they look to purchase from companies that actively amplify vulnerable voices by participating in community outreach and contributing to educational programs.
Many of today's sourcing practices are insularly focused on profit over partnership, environmental awareness, and social responsibility. As a teenager prepared to navigate a tumult-filled business world, I firmly believe the 3P framework of People, Profit, and Planet must be considered at every step of the decision-making process. It is essential to punctuate global economic growth with responsible procurement metrics while integrating disruptive technologies into supply chain management.
Between robotic process automation, which handles repeatable tasks, and cognitive computing technologies, which can be trained to read variable inputs and take corresponding actions, workflow orchestration is vital to supply chain transparency. Pairing social governance with innovative technological breakthroughs infuses empathy and creativity into business processes.
As a young person, I am incredibly grateful to witness this reckoning and play my small part in bringing about business responsibility. Building on my work founding Youth for Ethical Sourcing, an organization focused on addressing the environmental, economic, and humanitarian aspects of sourcing within supply chains, SIG's CSP course has allowed me to develop a technical base for my work.
The Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) Program is a 10-week course that focuses on the hard and soft skills of sourcing, including strategic sourcing and outsourcing methodologies, as well as best practices in negotiations.
Yukta Ramanan, Executive Director, Youth for Ethical Sourcing
Yukta Ramanan is a high school senior from Northern Virginia and serves as the Founder and Executive Director at Youth for Ethical Sourcing, an organization working to address sourcing from an economical supply chain, environmental, and humanitarian lens. As part of this role, she has published a children's book on conscious consumerism titled Choco Tales and is slated to become the youngest ever Certified Sourcing Professional. Yukta is also Director of Strategic Planning and Public Outreach at The Greater Good Initiative, a youth policy think tank, and is the host of a podcast aiming to find a middle-ground to contested global issues. As the student policy director of her county's student equity coalition, Yukta also spearheads policy on expanding the curriculum to include more comprehensive coverage of sexuality, gender, and mental health. When she isn't working, you can find her dancing Bharatanatyam (an Indian classical art form), writing original music, or browsing the aisles of a local Trader Joe's
SIG University Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) program graduate Yukta Ramanan shares her unique perspective of ethical business and sourcing practices from the next generation of sourcing professionals.
My name is Yukta Ramanan, and I'm 17 years old. Now you may be asking yourself: why is a teenager training to receive a Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) credential? The question is entirely valid. Unlike most people taking this course, I have little experience working professionally within the field of sourcing. What I possess, however, is a uniquely Gen Z perspective on the future of sourcing, and my motive for taking the CSP course was to learn how to bring my vision to fruition.
The Sourcing Industry Group's CSP training taught me a great deal about business finance and strategic value chain analysis. A lesson I found particularly eye-opening was centered on ethics within supply chains. A business must define company-specific ethical standards to decide on a moral issue. Determining what is ethical, which varies broadly, usually follows five approaches.
Once a business determines the approach that works best for its goals, it must work to integrate it with its existing frameworks. Many companies are focused on maximizing profit and are not concerned about factors outside traditional corporate success. Others use the stakeholder interest theory to guide company decisions. If businesses follow the minimum moral approach, they believe that while profit must be prioritized, harm to others should be avoided or addressed.
For example, if a company pollutes a water body by establishing a factory, they are responsible for preventing other negative externalities by compensating injured parties. Last, but perhaps the most ambitious theory, is corporate citizenship, which cites that companies should go out of their ways to solve social problems, even if they didn't play a known role in the issue's development. As consumers have grown to value sustainable marketplaces, they look to purchase from companies that actively amplify vulnerable voices by participating in community outreach and contributing to educational programs.
Many of today's sourcing practices are insularly focused on profit over partnership, environmental awareness, and social responsibility. As a teenager prepared to navigate a tumult-filled business world, I firmly believe the 3P framework of People, Profit, and Planet must be considered at every step of the decision-making process. It is essential to punctuate global economic growth with responsible procurement metrics while integrating disruptive technologies into supply chain management.
Between robotic process automation, which handles repeatable tasks, and cognitive computing technologies, which can be trained to read variable inputs and take corresponding actions, workflow orchestration is vital to supply chain transparency. Pairing social governance with innovative technological breakthroughs infuses empathy and creativity into business processes.
As a young person, I am incredibly grateful to witness this reckoning and play my small part in bringing about business responsibility. Building on my work founding Youth for Ethical Sourcing, an organization focused on addressing the environmental, economic, and humanitarian aspects of sourcing within supply chains, SIG's CSP course has allowed me to develop a technical base for my work.
The Certified Sourcing Professional (CSP) Program is a 10-week course that focuses on the hard and soft skills of sourcing, including strategic sourcing and outsourcing methodologies, as well as best practices in negotiations.
Yukta Ramanan is a high school senior from Northern Virginia and serves as the Founder and Executive Director at Youth for Ethical Sourcing, an organization working to address sourcing from an economical supply chain, environmental, and humanitarian lens. As part of this role, she has published a children's book on conscious consumerism titled Choco Tales and is slated to become the youngest ever Certified Sourcing Professional. Yukta is also Director of Strategic Planning and Public Outreach at The Greater Good Initiative, a youth policy think tank, and is the host of a podcast aiming to find a middle-ground to contested global issues. As the student policy director of her county's student equity coalition, Yukta also spearheads policy on expanding the curriculum to include more comprehensive coverage of sexuality, gender, and mental health. When she isn't working, you can find her dancing Bharatanatyam (an Indian classical art form), writing original music, or browsing the aisles of a local Trader Joe's