Ethical buying: How to evaluate the pros

Purchasing ethics: how do your internal customers judge your behavior?

Professionals need to be all the more concerned with questions ofpurchasing ethics that their behavior is observed and judged by colleagues in other departments.

Even if several different buyer teams are working on the same consultation, there will always be internal customers who are dissatisfied with the selected supplier.

This discontent can sometimes be translated into criticisms questioning theEthics of the Purchasing Department.

The following circumstances may serve as reasons for internal customers wishing to denounce the Purchasing Department as having behaved unethically:

• 1. A member of the Purchasing team accepted a donation—maybe even a low-value item like a pen—from a supplier.
• 2. A member of the Purchasing team has a personal or financial relationship with a supplier or a supplier employee.
• 3. A member of the Purchasing team owns Shares of a company.
• 4. A member ofPurchasing teams mix business and entertainment with a supplier, for example by discussing business over a meal.
• 5. In a tendering situation, the Purchasing team provided some information to a supplier that was not shared with other suppliers.
• 6. The Purchasing team was not transparent enough during the selection of a supplier.

As a buyer, take care of your image with internal collaborators (even if they are not exempt from criticism either!).

Olivier Audino, CEO
Graduated from Grenoble School of Management.

Before founding Buy Made Easy, Olivier worked for 7 years in the Purchasing Department of General Electric, United Technologies and the SEB Group.

It is by sharing with operational staff and business leaders in France and Europe that the idea of offering a marketplace that is easy to use and exclusively dedicated to the expectations of professionals was born.

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