Bringing Sustainability Metrics to Purchasing Decisions
When hotel chain Hilton Worldwide tried to assess its supply chain's sustainability, it found itself stymied by the lack of tools available to its procurement professionals in assessing suppliers and realized quickly that it wasn't alone in this problem. Hilton partnered with sustainability consultant BSR to create the Center for Sustainable Procurement to help companies weigh sustainability factors more readily. William Kornegay, senior vice president, Hilton Supply Management, Hilton Worldwide, and Eric Olson, senior vice president, advisory services, BSR, are in the heart of the project. In a conversation with David Kiron, MIT Sloan Management Review's executive editor of the Big Ideas Initiative, Kornegay and Olson talk about how the two organizations got together, the challenges of driving sustainability down to the level of a purchasing decision and why AT&;T is an early model.