BCCD Green

Climate, however, is only one force reshaping business. The pandemic, geopolitical conflict, disruption in the Red Sea and growing trade fragmentation have each tested organisations in different ways. Their causes and consequences differ, yet they have repeatedly exposed many of the same weaknesses.

Business leaders should take note.

If fundamentally different crises continue to reveal the same vulnerabilities, perhaps the problem is not the disruption itself, but the way businesses and value chains have been designed.

For decades, supply chains were optimised for efficiency. Today, they are being tested for resilience.

Many of today’s disruptions are less isolated events than stress tests of decisions made years ago—about sourcing, supplier concentration, resource dependency and supply chain design.

Organisations have invested heavily in resilience through better forecasting, greater supply chain visibility, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. These capabilities are valuable, but they all begin from the same assumption: disruption has already occurred.

Perhaps resilience needs to start earlier.

Instead of asking only how quickly organisations can respond, we should also ask why they remain vulnerable in the first place.

The answer lies in exposure.

Every organisation is shaped by decisions about where it sources, who it depends on, how products move through the supply chain, which resources it consumes and how value is created across its supplier network. Together, these choices determine how much exposure is built into the business—dependencies that often remain invisible until disruption puts them to the test.

Climate change illustrates this clearly.

Floods do not create supplier concentration. Drought does not create dependence on scarce water resources. Extreme heat does not create fragile infrastructure. These events expose choices made years earlier about sourcing, investment and supply chain design.

The same pattern has emerged across recent crises. The pandemic did not create over-reliance on individual suppliers. Disruption in the Red Sea did not create dependence on vulnerable shipping routes. Geopolitical instability did not create concentrated supply chains.

They revealed them.

Climate disruption does not simply create supply chain risk.

It reveals where value chains are already exposed.

That distinction changes how we think about resilience.

Resilience is measured not only by an organisation’s ability to respond, but by its ability to limit the structural exposure that makes disruption so costly.

Viewed through that lens, sustainability takes on a different strategic role.

For years, sustainability was often positioned alongside business strategy—important for compliance, reporting and corporate responsibility, yet frequently treated as a separate agenda. That distinction is fading because many of the actions that strengthen sustainability also remove organisational exposure.

Diversifying suppliers minimises concentration risk. Improving resource efficiency lessens dependence on constrained inputs. Circular business models mitigate reliance on virgin materials. Investing in supplier capability bolsters resilience across the value chain. Better water stewardship reduces exposure to water stress, while renewable energy lowers dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets.

These are not simply sustainability initiatives. Sustainability and resilience are two expressions of the same strategic objective: reducing organisational exposure.

Carbon provides the clearest example.

Historically, carbon has been viewed as a measure of environmental impact. Increasingly, it is becoming a measure of organisational exposure.

Carbon-intensive business models often depend on volatile energy markets, resource-intensive production and long, complex supply chains. As organisations reduce emissions, they frequently reduce those dependencies as well.

Carbon, in other words, is becoming a proxy for exposure.

This is why sustainability is gaining strategic importance—not because organisations have decided it matters more, but because it is linked to resilience, competitiveness and long-term value creation.

If reducing exposure is becoming central to resilience, an important question follows.

Who shapes those decisions?

Those decisions sit with procurement.

Resilience is designed long before disruption occurs through decisions about products, materials, manufacturing, suppliers, logistics and commercial relationships. For decades, cost, quality and efficiency dominated those choices. Today, resilience and sustainability have joined them.

Procurement is therefore no longer simply buying for today’s performance. It is helping design tomorrow’s resilience.

This new view of resilience sits at the heart of The Great Conversation, a global dialogue led by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS). It explores how the procurement profession must evolve to help organisations become more resilient, sustainable and competitive—and, through the decisions it influences every day, help shape the world we want to live in.

Climate change will continue to reshape the operating environment. It will not be the only source of disruption, but it is accelerating a broader shift in how businesses think about resilience.

The question is no longer simply how organisations respond when disruption occurs.

It is how they design businesses that are less exposed before disruption begins.

The organisations best prepared for the future will not necessarily be those that respond the fastest.

They will be those that designed less exposure into their businesses from the outset.

Maxfield Weiss

Global Head of Sustainability

Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS)

Join The Great Conversation: https://www.cips.org/knowledge-and-insight/the-great-conversation