Jaymie Forrest

Karin Bursa, Host of Supply Chain Now’s TEKTOK was a guest on The Digital Supply Chain Podcast with Tom Raftery. Listen in on the fascinating and wide-ranging conversations covering everything from trends in AI/Ml to data to blockchain, to education. Click here to listen to the entire episode.

Companies spend enormous amounts of time debating sustainability strategy. They invest in emissions reduction. They launch environmental initiatives. They publish ESG reports. They set ambitious goals. Yet many overlook a simpler question: Who is helping shape those decisions in the boardroom? Recent research published in the Journal of Business Logistics suggests that board composition may influence environmental performance in ways that executives do not fully appreciate. The study examined more than 2,000 firm year observations across 306 publicly traded business-to-business companies. The researchers explored whether having a customer or supplier represented on the board of directors affected a firm’s environmental performance. The answer was yes. But not in the way many executives might expect. Most discussions about board diversity focus on demographics, functional expertise, or independence. This research points to another form of diversity that may be equally important: where directors sit within the supply chain. A customer and a supplier can look at the same sustainability decision and see very different priorities. Those priorities often shape the choices firms ultimately make. The researchers found that companies with customer affiliated directors generally achieved stronger environmental performance. Customer representatives appeared to bring market knowledge and external stakeholder expectations into board discussions.…