At last night’s CIPS Annual Dinner, CIPS president Paula Gildert spoke about attending a celebration of the career of her company’s chairman, who is retiring after 25 years.
Daniel Vasella, currently chairman of pharmaceutical firm Novartis where Gildert works, was instrumental in the pharmaceutical firm’s development of a treatment for myeloid leukemia and named as one of Time magazine’s top 100 people in 2004. (more…)
If finding the perfect Valentine’s Day present was not tricky enough already, a number of organisations are prompting Romeos (and Juliets) to make sure they consider the ethical dimension of the gifts they plan to give today. (more…)
When asking the question ‘how can procurement become more strategic in a business?’, a common piece of advice I have heard is to align the goals of procurement with the objectives of the business.
I have often wondered who isn’t trying to do this when setting the objectives for their department, given it seems lunacy to have the function moving in one direction, when the business wants to achieve something else. (more…)
sale viagra height=”100″ />When I started working on SM I had a large desk that curved around a corner.
When the company expanded, we had to find space to accommodate our new colleagues and my nice wide workspace (along with everybody else’s) was replaced with a much smaller version. And as the tower of books waiting to be reviewed to my right looms over me, I long for a bit of extra space.
It could be worse of course, as I might not even have a desk to call my own – and it looks as though this is the way things are heading. (more…)
cialis saleheight=”100″ />Yesterday evening the city of Bristol launched its own currency, the Bristol Pound, with the aim of supporting and developing local businesses and keeping spending within the community. The organisers also believe businesses that use and accept the currency will benefit from the publicity. (more…)
According to a survey by recruitment firm Reed, the primary attributes required by staff is the ability to make workers feel comfortable (71 per cent), to be calm under pressure (67 per cent) and tied on 62 per cent was providing the freedom to work uninterrupted, and giving clear instructions and defined targets. (more…)
Preparing a piece for the next issue of SM on the approval of a draft Public Procurement Bill in India, I was intrigued by one of the provisions included – and wondered if a similar idea would be workable in the UK.
While the legislation provides disgruntled bidders with a more structured way to complain about tender processes, it also introduces penalties for “vexatious, frivolous or malicious complaints”. The punishment for this is a fine that could be as much as five per cent of the procurement in question. (more…)
You can quickly become quite cynical about public procurement in the UK, with its arcane rules, constant reform programmes and mistakes that make national headlines.
But we take for granted that the biggest fear for the majority of our public buyers is that their error might end up on the six o’clock news, or splashed over the front page of the local newspaper.
Sadly, for public purchasers working elsewhere in the world, this is not always the case. (more…)
At last night’s CIPS Annual Dinner, CIPS president Paula Gildert spoke about attending a celebration of the career of her company’s chairman, who is retiring after 25 years.![[Bloglines]](http://blog.supplymanagement.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
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