Critical Analysis Of Green Supply Chain Management At Haigh's Chocolates, An Essay.

This assessment task requires students to examine current articles and reports in the past 24 months relating to sustainable engineering/practises and to perform a critical analysis of the subject area covered in a specific article. Articles may cover areas such as new manufacturing processes, extraction of materials/minerals, infrastructure challenges, renewable technologies, food production, etc. Students are required to demonstrate/speculate on how existing or new engineering practises/solutions can address these challenges in the short and longer term.

Green Supply Chain Management practices at Haigh's Chocolates

The report critically examines the chosen case study on the basis of range of articles on sustainable engineering practices like the green supply chain management. The chosen case study reports on environmental sustainability practices by Haigh's Chocolates. The chosen subject area to be critically analysed is “Green Supply Chain Management”. According to the chosen case study, Haigh's Chocolates appears to be involved in green schemes to attain business sustainability.

The nature of the case study as evident from the report is about applying green schemes to everything that are a part of the supply chain operations of Haigh’s. It includes but not limited to like packaging of products, recycling process and so on. There are historical, current and future contexts attached with the green supply chain management. These days operating just for the sake of revenues no longer exist. It has largely been replaced by operating in the context of society, economic and environmental development. There are examples that show how few reputed firms have faced criticism for their ignorance to environmental development. Nestle for anti-deforestation, Nike for child labour and so on (Gong et al. 2018). As a result, sustainable business practices across the global firms is now increasingly growing. Indeed, integrated reporting (IR) framework is increasingly becoming a part of worldwide firms (Camilleri 2018). The future of sustainable practice will see range of engineering technologies coming to the existence. These technologies will be used by worldwide firms to help their business attain sustainability.

The main purpose of this assignment is to critically analyse the green supply chain management practices at Haigh’s Chocolates. The sustainable practices are being analysed against a range of scholarly articles on sustainable engineering or the green supply chain management practices. 

The main objective of this report is to critically analyse the green supply chain practices at Haigh’s Chocolates. The objective is being served by evaluating green practices in the case study company against a set of critical success factors of the green supply chain management. The critical success factors to be considered for this report are ‘Quality of Human Resources’, ‘Government Support System’, ‘Top Management Commitment’ and ‘Unawareness of customers’ (Dou, Zhu and Sarkis 2018).

In this section of the report, a critical analysis of the green practices at Haigh’s Chocolates is being done by evaluating these practices against a set of chosen factors. These factors are critical success factors for a green supply chain management.

Quality of Human Resources

Analysis against set of chosen factors: -

Quality of Human Resources

Human resource management has an important role to play in ensuring a sustainable green practice. This also holds true in context to Haigh’s Chocolates. An adherence to the green supply chain management is hard to happen until the different related tasks are allocated to the right people. Task allocation does not have a direct of the human resource management. However, they are a part of task allocation team and are responsible also for communicating and letting people reach to their concern departments. Hence, the quality of HRM at Haigh’s will be considered to have done a great job if it was able to communicate and facilitate activities related to green schemes.

Haigh’s is fortunate to have staffs who are highly dedicated and involved as well. It is always beneficial to have such staffs in the company. As observed by Darmawan and Sinaga (2018), employees are a valuable asset to any organization. The article further says that employees must be nurtured and retained to reduce the rate of attrition and enhance employee engagement. Employee engagement as according to Abdolshah, Khatibi and Moghimi (2018) is a storehouse of creative thoughts. The human resource management at Haigh’s has been able to enhance employee engagement. It is evident in the range of works that staffs are involved into. Appropriately dealing with suppliers is one of the most critical tasks to conduct. Suppliers will rarely say that their materials are defective. Indeed, it is the responsibility of the buyer firm to ensure that everything is in appropriate place. To do so it needs to have staffs who are heartedly dedicated to their job responsibilities. This is where Haigh’s performs better. Haigh’s has staffs who cautiously check products being shipped from suppliers. Staffs ensure a close look at the packaging. In addition, suppliers are also being instructed for introducing new methods to lessen the waste. There are instances when some packaging is resend to suppliers, so that, these can be used for recycling.  

It has already been identified from above two paragraphs that human resource management has an essential role to play in ensuring the green supply chain management at Haigh’s. The HRM has been dealing effectively with employees. Consequently, employee engagement is pretty good in the company. However, the HR manager must have a few meetings with the top management team at Haigh’s. The agenda of the meeting should be enhancing its capability in marketing communication. A collaboration between top management and the HRM would result in identifying suitable techniques to be adopted to rejuvenate the marketing communication (Stokes et al. 2018).

Government Support System

The national government is committed to support business with sustainable practices both verbally and in written forms. It is evident from range of advertisements, which are given permissions to be broadcasted on Television during popular daily soaps or any events. It is also evident from their policy making. The government has some strict legal policy to promote the sustainable business practice. A business is often and so criticised from the national government and are also being forced to face the strict legal actions when it go against the sustainable practices. These all indicate that the national government is seriously committed to environmental wellbeing. However, few of their actions do not go in line with what they have said both verbally and in written. Instead of discouraging the imports of cheap materials from outside the country the government is more focused on a hike in the tax rates of imported items (Feng et al. 2018). This is not probably the best way to stop cheap materials form coming to Australia. It is because the move will also affect those manufacturers that source quality materials from around the globe. For example, Haigh’s Chocolates has the UTZ Certification and source 70% of the beans from only the UTZ certified farms (Haighschocolates.com.au 2019). Now, in such situation the increased tax will affect the pricing of chocolates that are healthy. The move may also discourage employers such as Haigh’s to stop offering quality products at cheaper rates. This will eventually impact its business strategy and will be needed to realign with middle to higher income groups. Hence, there can be significant reduction in the volume sales of Haigh’s dark chocolates. The accessibility rate to dark chocolates will also decrease for the low-income groups (Young et al. 2018). Overall, this is nothing but discouraging the production of healthy chocolates in the name of tax.

Leadership according to Ma and Seidl (2018) is essential to inspire excellence in work. Leaders know what to do in different situation. They are self-motivated and motivate others to work in favour of the organizational goals. They have capabilities to sense the needs to undergo the change. Leaders in collaboration with the HR managers analyse the different operating domains in the company. Such activities help to identify areas that are underperforming. Until and unless leaders are involved into analysing the company’s overall performance they won’t arrive to the solution. These are some of the reasons why leadership or top management commitment is essential to conduct the green supply chain management.

Top Management Commitment

In context to Haigh’ Chocolates, the leadership in the company appears to be on the target with respect to new operations goal. They seem like being aware of the importance of executing the green supply chain management. This is why they have initiated a range of programs to ensure that Haigh’s is practicing the green supply chain. One of such moves is the philosophy that the leaders follow for packaging. They are always intended at reduce, reuse and recycle till the moment it is possible. Haigh’s is also the first company to sign for the Australian Packaging Covenant (Haighschocolates.com.au 2019). However, the effectiveness of the move will depend on the quantity of items being enrolled for recycle and reuse. As argued by Mathivathanan, Kannan and Haq (2018), conducting a recycle program is largely ineffective till the moment it happens on a larger platform. Indeed, this is truly a very good initiative being adopted by leaders at Haigh’s; however, the success will lot depend on how it actually turns out in long-term.

The use of 100% recyclable items as claimed by Haigh’s is another notable feat towards maintaining a green supply chain management. It shows utilisation of latest and emerging engineering works by Haigh’s leaders. For example, it is being instructed by leaders to use glass, cardboard boxes, gift wrapping paper and cardboard boxes made up of materials that are 100% recyclable. Plastics are placed in plastic bin while the shrink wrap is send to recycled products manufacturer (Haighschocolates.com.au 2019). However, plastics can never be biodegraded, it rather breaks down into smaller pieces. It means that if Haigh’s leaders are committed to deliver on the green supply chain management, they must get rid of using plastics and find its best alternative. The use of printers using vegetable-based inks is though a good move considering that this will not emit carbon. This is also environmentally certified.

This is perhaps a major area of concern for Haigh’s in regards to maintaining its green supply chain. Customers are not generally aware of facts like chocolates can even be beneficial to the health. However, this is true. Dark chocolates are contained with ingredients, which are beneficial to health (Cantini et al. 2018). Unawareness to customers in regards to dark chocolates require extensive marketing stuffs in variety of forms. A range of marketing channels is needed to be used to make people aware of the health benefits of dark chocolates. As opined by Chernev (2018), effective promotion of products can also encourage impulse buying.

Unawareness of Customers

In context to Haigh’s Chocolates, this can be said that the company has an extensive marketing reach. It is already into a variety of marketing channels such as Television advertisements. The company makes a portion of its revenues directly from selling satellite rights. However, the fact that the company is aimed at maintaining and retaining the green supply chain operations, additional efforts will also be required. Additional efforts mean including a range of more marketing techniques. With regards to marketing communication, public relationship (PR) events can be organised. Such events full of opportunities and provide a real-time interaction with the media and viewers. Moreover, apart from magazine advertisement PR events are effective ways to be descriptive while explaining the products and the changes being introduced to it. It gives opportunity to media and the viewers as well. They can ask number of questions, which will only enhance their knowledge of the product. Moreover, when such events will be covered in popular daily newspapers or at any compatible platform will make some sense for the purpose it serves (McCamley and Gilmore 2018). 

To conclude, this can be said that Haigh’s Chocolates is involved into range of practices to ensure the green supply chain management practices. The company’s leadership is able to identify the areas to incorporate with sustainable engineering practices. This report has also discussed a few of those areas. However, the green supply chain management at Haigh’s faces some barriers as well. One of the barriers is strict government policy on imported items. Notably, 70% of the beans that Haigh’s use are imported. Additionally, recycling process is not also fully incorporated with engineering practice. It clearly lacks the understanding of sustainable engineering. For example, plastics management in the recycling programs of the company. However, plastics cannot biodegrade. It is better not to use plastics than manage it.

References 

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