Jonathan O’Brien is well-known to many procurement professionals and students both for this work with training and consulting firm Positive Purchasing and his string of key procurement books. His Category Management volume is the definitive book on that subject, and others on Negotiation and Supplier Relationship Management are important works in those fields too.
The books are all suitable for both students of the subject and for practitioners, up to and including senior level people. They combine a wide range of practical tools and advice with strong strategic thinking and understanding. And that is exactly what he has achieved again with his latest 500-page epic, “Sustainable Procurement – A Practical Guide To Corporate Social Responsibility in the Supply Chain”, published by Kogan Page. I do have to declare an interest of course as the author (with Mark Perera) of the first book on the subject - Procurement with Purpose. But I will put personal and professional jealousy aside as far as I can for this review!
In summary, this is a very impressive piece of work. Whilst it does contain a considerable amount of what you might call background material on sustainability issues, the heart of it is (as in O’Brien’s other books) is strong, practical advice in terms of actually implementing strategies and plans to deliver effective procurement whilst following the key principles of sustainability.
The first 100 pages or so of the book give the high-level background to the wide range of subjects that can fall into the “sustainability” bracket. Interestingly, O’Brien ranges more widely then we did in our book, with quite extensive discussion around both digital issues (cybercrime, data protection and so on) and the “criminal” end of ethical business – with discussions of bribery and corruption in particular. I had not really seen these as fitting within the “procurement with purpose” scope, but O’Brien makes a good argument for considering them alongside the more usual core environmental, social and economic sustainability topics.
Part 2 of the book is another 100 or so pages and starts getting into sustainable procurement in a serious way, with some background then an impressive and useful discussion around building the business case, developing a strategic vision and so on. There is informative discussion of external frameworks, protocols and measures, and generally this section is very strong – it is much more detailed than the equivalent in our book.
Part 3, all 250 pages of it, is all about implementation. It starts with assessing the supply base and prioritisation, then moves on through a section about “making what we buy sustainable” covering specifications and related matters. This is thought-provoking, and again much more complete than my discussion of that issue. As you would expect given his previous work, O’Brien then positions sustainability into the core category management and supplier management / relationship processes, moving through contracting into supplier assessment and audit, supply chain mapping and finally measuring outcomes and sharing success. There are lots of tools, models and frameworks provided, and an impressive grasp of detail.
There are some gaps – even with 500 pages, this is a huge topic across all the issues that fall under the “sustainability” heading. So (and this is true on our book too) there is limited discussion about offsets for example. This has become a big issue, with controversy around carbon credits that in theory excuse an organisation from actually reducing their emissions. The concept is now spreading into the biodiversity world too.
The book also does not really cover social value and specific public sector issues. Perhaps because of that, there is also not much about building sustainability into formal supplier selection processes alongside other evaluation criteria. Whilst that is perhaps a more significant issue for the public sector, many private firms also are working out how to do that today.
However, I would still recommend the book to public sector buyers; the vast majority of the material covered is relevant to both public and private sectors, from the background and strategy sections to the SRM material. Indeed, all in all, this will be a very valuable resource for years to come for procurement professionals and teams. It will no doubt also be added to the CIPS syllabus and approved reading material for students of the profession. In addition, it will be useful to many of those in the sustainability world beyond procurement.
However, the RRP of the paperback book is £49.99, and Amazon is selling at £44.99, so that may deter some potential readers who don’t have a company expense account to charge it against. I know that pricing is the standard Kogan Page business model – which is very much along the lines of academic publishers – but it is a shame that this might reduce the readership of this impressive book. And rather strangely, Waterstones are advertising a hardback version at £165! Bad Buying award to anyone who pays that…