Supplier diversity: Certifying minority owned suppliers for IBM

Abstract

The project was floated by the Supply Chain Management Center. The project was begun with a scope to analyze the supplier diversity prevailing in countries such as India, Hungary and Vietnam. IBM had formulated and adopted minority development policies in developed economies like the USA and Europe. Similar policies have to be rolled out for developing economies too. The project would have involved the study of existing processes and benchmarking the existing certification processes of different organizations / countries. Based on the data collected, certification processes would be rolled out for emerging economies. Due to changes from IBM’s side during the course of the project, the project looked to explore the definition of diversity in India. The project began by understanding the meaning of diversity. It also focuses on the issue of supplier diversity and the reason for it becoming important in the context of business. The project moved on to focus on the initiatives which IBM had carried out in the rest of the world. There was also an analysis done on the initiatives that are being carried out by the other international companies to determine if IBM could replicate any of those models. Then, though the focus of the project was supposed to have on India, Hungary and Vietnam, it was felt that this would cover too much area and would only give an overview and in order give in-depth analysis the scope is restricted to India only. The meaning of diversity from an Indian aspect was explored. All the different parameters which could potentially be diversifying the population were considered and data was obtained to determine the numbers and ratios of such groups. Further on, there was a special focus on Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe people as the Indian Constitution bestows special attention on these groups. The history of these groups of people was traced since their origins to their current status and the progress that they have made. All the different policies that the government had devised over the past 50 years for these people were documented and there was an attempt to understand where SC and ST people stood now after 50 years of Independence and reservation. It was found that these people got access to jobs but they were mostly jobs no one else wanted to do and their representation in the upper echelons of public firms was negligible. There were issues found during the study and these have been documented. The focus of the project then shifted to identify initiatives carried out in India by both the government and the private sector to improve Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe people and women. There were several notable initiatives that found like the government’s scholarship scheme for the minority communities’ education. The project would further move on to consider the progress of IBM with respect to women suppliers in India and the focus would be on developing a comprehensive policy for women suppliers for IBM India.