What's Your Strategy for Supply Chain Disclosure?

We live in an era where many organizations operate highly complex and globalized supply chains. While these supply chains are now required to be lean, agile and sustainable, they are also the focus of growing attention from a variety of external stakeholders seeking information that includes and frequently exceeds what the company is legally obliged to disclose. However, many companies have limited visibility of their supply chain information, have a poor understanding of their capabilities for capturing and reporting this information and have not overtly considered their supply chain information disclosure strategy. In this article we discuss the pressures on companies to disclose supply chain information, the drivers and impediments to supply chain disclosure, and the types of supply chain information typically made available to the public. Finally, we identify the broad disclosure strategies companies can use to release supply chain information and offer managers guidance on designing the optimal disclosure strategy for their company.