Insight from industry: Moet Hennessy’s development of an innovative supplier diversity program in the wine and beverage industry

Abstract

Purpose

Supplier diversity has roots in US supply chains going back 50  years. Unfortunately, supplier diversity programs have been hindered by less than wholehearted buyer adoption and stakeholder engagement. The original scoping of supplier diversity also holds limitations when comparing to the multidimensionality of the diversity and inclusion concept. The purpose of this article is to share lessons learned from the development of an innovative supplier diversity program by Moet Hennessy aimed at more sustainably scoping, scaling and stimulating supplier diversity programs.

Design/methodology/approach

The development and the design of Moet Hennessy’s supplier diversity program is presented. The design was informed, and partially supported by, a collaboration with the author. Critical reflections on pitfalls and outstanding questions are developed based upon the program design.

Findings

Moet Hennessy developed a supplier diversity program that is more comprehensively defined, targets a more global scale and includes innovative stakeholder engagement techniques such as the development of supplier diversity champions in the business. The program also is embedded in existing environmental social and governance initiatives.

Originality/value

Moet Hennessy’s supplier diversity program was not mandated by one of its customers but sourced from an academic collaboration and stimulated by competitive opportunity. The program was designed bottoms up, not top down. The program is sponsored outside of procurement and has champions throughout the business. The program expands beyond the traditional scoping of supplier diversity programs. Pathways and pitfalls for managers are identified based upon insights from Moet Hennessy’s experience. These inform suggestions for further research.

Citation

van Hoek, R., Lebigot, D., Bagot, A. and Sexton, S. (2024), "Insight from industry: Moet Hennessy’s development of an innovative supplier diversity program in the wine and beverage industry", Supply Chain Management, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 460-467. https://doi.org/10.1108/SCM-01-2023-0041

1. Introduction

Supplier diversity finds its roots in US public procurement over 50  years ago (Blount, 2021). By requiring companies bidding for government contracts to allocate part of their external spend toward suppliers that have diverse ownership, the government sought to grow societal benefits from improved economic inclusion and economic activity for underrepresented constituencies. Supplier diversity is historically operationalized as ownership of a supplier, for at least 51%, by a woman or a minority. Of recent date veterans, disabled and LBGTQ have been widely added to the categorization (Swette and Boyo, 2021). The question can be raised, however, if these dimensions of diversity typically considered in supplier diversity programs and a focus on ownership of the supplier, while measurable and concrete, sufficiently reflects the complexity of the diversity concept (Yang et al., 2022). And if this definition captures the full societal impact potential of supplier diversity programs.

Today, the original US government approach of requesting suppliers to allocate a share of their spend with diverse-owned suppliers would be considered a Tier 2 focus. This is a focus on diverse spend by Tier 1 suppliers. These Tier 1 suppliers do not have to be diverse in ownership, instead the effort is focused on ensuring Tier 1 suppliers buy from diverse suppliers. Such a spend mandate for Tier 1 suppliers grows economic opportunity and inclusion indirectly only, in the Tier 2 supply base. A focus on including diverse suppliers as Tier 1 suppliers has become a common feature of supplier diversity programs. As opposed to the indirect diversity impact achieved with a Tier 2 focus, a Tier 1 focus drives a direct diversity impact.

The original US government focus on mandating diverse supplier spend as a tender selection criterium creates, from an institutional perspective (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), coercive pressures on suppliers. To win the tender, they have to comply with diversity requirements. This might stimulate a focus on compliance with customer mandates and introduce risks of greenwashing (Mena et al., 2018; Hoek et al., 2020b). In this context, Brockhaus et al. (2019) point at the opportunity to not just focus on minimum standards for sustainability but also at capability development for competitive differentiation. Supplier diversity can improve innovativeness of the supply base (Blount and Li, 2021), enable access to new markets (Whitfield and Landeros, 2006) and drive sales and cost competitiveness (Greer et al., 2006). In addition, council for supply chain management professionals (CSCMP) reported a growth in the number of supplier diversity programs for the past three years in a row (CSCMP, 2022) and supplier diversity has become a recognized key pillar of company sustainability and environmental social and governance (ESG) programs (Tate et al., 2010) and an element of sustainability programs of leading companies (van Hoek and Udesen, 2023).

The introduction of supplier diversity by the US government led to a largely US-centric development of the concept. To this day, the concept is largely seen as a US-centric concept (Sordi et al., 2022). This begs the question: if supplier diversity is a valuable pillar of ESG strategies and so good for business, why would that be limited to the USA only? Ram and Smallbone (2003) studied UK supplier diversity initiatives but at the time found them to be less mature than US supplier diversity initiatives. And Worthington et al. (2008) compared UK and US supplier diversity initiatives to find different institutional and contextual settings. Notably, they included cases of companies that had both a US and UK initiative and included several US-based companies in the study of UK supplier diversity initiatives. This raises the question if perhaps US-based companies are exporting initiatives to the UK. In addition, the question becomes what level and type of differentiation of initiatives may be needed from one country to the next, considering different institutional and contextual settings. Worthington et al. (2008) also called for the inclusion of companies from other parts of the world in future research.

Supplier diversity programs are often owned by procurement organizations (Greer et al., 2006). A focus on compliance with customer mandates, however, also means that buyers may not necessarily wholehearted commitment to diverse suppliers (Blount, 2021). In particular, because buyers typically face multiple competing priorities (Sordi et al., 2022). Yet, buyer engagement and attitude toward diverse suppliers matters (Blount and Li, 2021). Buyers help companies make supplier selection and buying decisions and can therefore be logical owners of supplier diversity programs. Supplier diversity efforts can be embedded in the day-to-day activities of buyers, making the program concrete and “lived”. However, given the role of budgetholders in making final buying and supplier selection decisions, buyer engagement may not suffice. Engagement of the wider internal stakeholder environment may also be crucial for impact (Tate et al., 2010).

Based upon the above, Table 1 summarizes innovative directions for supplier diversity programs in industry along three dimensions, scope, stimulants and scale. Featuring six elements within those three dimensions. Section 2 introduces how Moet Hennessy developed and started introducing an innovative supplier diversity program that aims to address all dimensions and elements of Table 1. Based upon the industry insights that can be learned from Moet Hennessy’s supplier diversity program, section 3 suggests avenues for industry and research.

2. Developing an innovative supplier diversity program at Moet Hennessy (written with input from Dominique Lebigot, Antoine Bagot and Shannon sexton of Moet Hennessy [1])

Moet Hennessy is the wines and spirits division of LVMH, based in Paris, France. The company owns some of the most prestigious and well-known brands in its industry and owns production locations around the world (see Figure 1 for an overview). The company’s 150 person strong global procurement organization impacts 4bn Euro in annual spend across five continents and the full scope of the company’s external spend. As shown in Figure 2, in addition to external spend on ingredients and materials, this includes bottles, labels and packaging materials. Beyond that procurement buys logistics services as well as marketing, advertising and all other services, capital equipment and IT. Because of its near complete coverage of spend and its globalized footprint, the organization is in a strong position to impact sustainability in its supply chain. Moet Hennessy procurement has a program in place focused on carbon reduction and sustainable agriculture. This program proofed a logical home for the addition of a supplier diversity program.

2.1 Origin of the program – innovative collaboration with academia

Moet Hennessy’s global procurement organization began work on the development of a supplier diversity program in 2021 as an outcome of the organization’s collaboration with the graduate school of the Sam M Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas (see van Hoek and Lebigot, 2023 for more detail). This collaboration was formed in 2020, driven by the desire of Moet Hennessy’s chief procurement officer (CPO) to inspire students and contribute to the development of the TalentBench for the profession and to establish relationships with a select number of top business schools in the field of procurement to establish a link to the latest thinking about procurement. The collaboration very much reflects an example answer to the need for thoughtful leaders that engage with academics around key industry challenges (Waller et al., 2012) and for academics that engage with industry leaders to support real-world progress on topics of relevance (van Hoek, 2021), fitting within the overarching need for talent development focus in supply chain research and practice (van Hoek et al., 2020a).

The collaboration, which continues today, involves student teams developing recommendations for furthering procurement efforts toward key strategic priorities of Moet Hennessy procurement, including sustainability. In 2021, one team recommended the development of a supplier diversity program referencing how Moet Hennessy’s main competitor has a program already in place, but with a limited scope. The team, consisting of masters in supply chain management students, had engaged with a project sponsor from Moet Hennessy’s procurement organization, the manager in charge of Moet Hennessy’s sustainability program, over the course of a semester. This engagement involved a briefing about the current state and focus of the sustainability program, follow-up interviews and workshop discussions around possible recommendations and reviews of drafted recommendations and findings from the team. The student team used class teachings to inform their work and conducted literature and industry research to gather further input and insight.

The team’s recommendation to develop a supplier diversity program articulated business benefits that can be derived from a supplier diversity program according to industry groups and peer companies. These benefits include end-consumer preference, innovative input and competitive differentiation from peers with more narrowly scoped supplier diversity programs. Inspired by the recommendations, the CPO of Moet Hennessy decided to pursue the development of a supplier diversity program. Not because of a customer requirement but as a sustainability and competitive opportunity for the company.

2.2 Scoping the program – engaging buyers from the start exploring boundaries of the concept

To develop the program, the CPO of Moet Hennessy assigned the topic to one of his direct reports to begin development of a program, with input from the Walton College faculty (first author). After the initial scoping was developed, Moet Hennessy’s procurement leadership presented the intended program at an all staff meeting. Leadership invited the formation of a team of buyers to develop a detailed program design and structure for presentation at the next all staff meeting. This was an intentional step, seeking to continue the exploration of competitive and innovative opportunities. In addition, the aim was to make it a bottoms up program “from the team – for the team” rather than a top-down initiative. This was done to reduce the risk of less than wholehearted buyer engagement. The supplier diversity program development team consisted of buyers from different categories and regions for the purpose of ensuring broad organizational engagement and diverse input into the program design. The team met virtually frequently over a few months period, leading up to a presentation of the program design at a biannual in person all staff meeting. The team lead met several times online with the Walton College faculty to seek coaching input and suggestions that the team could consider.

There are three unique features to the scoping of the program as developed by the team. The scoping of the program is not limited to diverse ownership of supplying companies. Instead, Moet Hennessy also considers diversity with suppliers that do not have a majority diverse ownership. This goes beyond requesting reporting on Tier 2 diverse spend from nondiverse suppliers. As the pyramid in Figure 3 illustrates the program scope also includes:

• the diversity and inclusion agenda and initiatives of suppliers;

• the diversity of the leadership of the supplying company; and

• supplier contributions to diverse communities.

This scoping was selected to less narrowly define supplier diversity and instead seek opportunities to improve diversity and inclusion throughout the supply-base for all suppliers involved.

2.3 Scaling the program; innovating stakeholder engagement

Roll out of the supplier diversity program started in the second half of 2022 in the USA. This stage of the program development no longer involved direct contributions from the Walton College faculty. As part of the ongoing collaboration between Moet Hennessy and the Walton College, faculty was kept informed and updated on update calls as the program developed and rolled out over the months. During these conversations, faculty asked reflective questions on the program and several outstanding issues were identified and discussed (as the next section will detail). Moet Hennessy procurement wants to go beyond adoption in the USA and is explicit in its desire to begin roll out to other countries after the launch in the USA. Starting with the temporary transfer of the procurement supplier diversity lead to Scotland.

To scale the program, Moet Hennessy buyers were targeted for the roll out of the program from the start. As were high levels of nonprocurement stakeholder engagement that go well beyond the more typical C-level endorsement of the program. Procurement leadership in the USA was able to position supplier diversity within the overall ESG and diversity and inclusion agenda of the company. As a result, procurement was able to secure active sponsorship of the program from the VP of inclusion, diversity and equity who is not part of the procurement organization. To broaden the stakeholder audience engaged a network of 20 supplier diversity champions was formed with the help of the VP of inclusion, diversity and equity. These champions are nonprocurement people with roles in various parts of the business. Procurement uses these champions as beachheads into the business and holds frequent champion meetings to drive activation and active learning across the network of champions. The champions meet quarterly and the VP of inclusion, diversity and equity actively participates in driving engagement and action with the champions.

The VP of inclusion, diversity and equity also hosted Moet Hennessy’s first supplier diversity “Impact” summit, organized collaboratively with procurement. The summit took place in New York during the fourth quarter of 2022 and Moet Hennessy publicly posted on social media about the event [2]. The summit focused largely on champions and wider business audiences inside Moet Hennessy and aimed to grow engagement in the program. Both other LVMH companies and suppliers featured on the agenda to drive learning. Most importantly, it raised a strong awareness on how being culturally relevant by onboarding diverse suppliers creates stronger values for Moet Hennessy brands.

One of the outcomes of the summit is the consistent inclusion of diverse agencies in standing monthly agency pitches that the marketing team organizes. For these pitches, several diverse-owned agencies have already been engaged in what the marketing team sees as a pathway to growing market relevance of its adds.

2.4 Outstanding questions

Table 2 lists the supplier diversity roll out initiatives that Moet Hennessy has taken so far. The development of the supplier diversity program is work in progress today and several issues are yet to be resolved. The first is measurement of the broadened program scope. Moet Hennessy has set a target to double its share of spend with diverse suppliers, currently just under 10% of its US indirect spend, in five years. However, this key performance indicator (KPI) reflects the traditional scope of spend with suppliers that have diverse ownership and US spend only. There are institutions that can certify suppliers using the traditional definition of supplier diversity but those do not exist for the other diversity aspects that Moet Hennessy targets. These do not widely exist internationally either and this might hinder globalization of the program. There is value in improving the ability to measure the broader definition of supplier diversity. Without it there is a risk that the traditional definition of supplier diversity is watered down and that there is ambiguity about the degree to which supplier diversity is achieved and actually pursued. Sceptics might say that “diversity initiatives” as a KPI is not as concrete as spend allocated toward diverse suppliers. And that “initiatives” is such a broad term and that many things, including very minor efforts, might be included, risking an inflated supplier diversity image. It should be noted, however, that doubling the percentage of spend with US suppliers that have diverse ownership alone would already take Moet Hennessy beyond industry benchmark levels, currently said to be at about 9% in the USA [3].

For the further roll out of the supplier diversity program into other parts of the world, select elements of the expanded diversity definition may not be legally feasible or socially acceptable for tracking and reporting in certain countries and market. As a result, the program may need to feature a degree of localization from one region to the next. An additional question will be how this may affect the roll out plan and the type of suppliers to engage in the various regions around the world in which Moet Hennessy operates.

The engagement of nonprocurement stakeholders is complementary to having Moet Hennessy buyers engaging in the program. This will likely require more work than the initial roll out. Beyond the internal activation with championships, Moet Hennessy will also start becoming more supplier-oriented in its program roll out, beginning to participate in industry conferences, bringing in a reporting system for Tier 2 spend of suppliers and making the program part of standing business review meetings with existing suppliers. The focus on training and tooling will also be important to ensure that buyers will not get outpaced by the business and might lose its leading role to stakeholders more removed from day-to-day buying decisions.

3. Insights and pathways for research and managers

Table 3 revisits the directions for innovating supplier diversity from Section 1 and complements these with insights from Moet Hennessy’s about supplier diversity program development and pitfalls to navigate in innovating supplier diversity.

The development of the “diversity pyramid” (Figure 3) to scope the supplier diversity program embraces the fact that there are more ways to impact inclusion than through spend with Tier 1 and 2 suppliers with diverse ownership alone. Selecting suppliers with diversity strategies, programs and diversity of leadership also enables economic inclusion directly and indirectly. It also grows the target audience for diversity efforts and enables engagement not with niches or selected segments of the supply-base but rather with a wider supplier audience. Procurement at Moet Hennessy is able to establish this scoping because it impacts almost all of the company’s spend. Were that not the case, the procurement team might have been in less of a position to scope broadly. Herein resides a pitfall for managers to be aware of, if procurement’s scope is limited in spend and reach, the ability to directly impact is reduced. It also implies that supplier diversity assumes a degree of maturity of the procurement organization. Further research could explore how innovation of supplier diversity programs relates to procurement maturation. Are there minimum maturity standards for effective supplier diversity programs? Does size of organization or type of organization (centralized or not) matter? And at what level of spend coverage is innovative scoping feasible? Can scoping of supplier diversity programs evolve in line with maturation or should it rather following maturation?

Part of the reason why procurement often is turned to for supplier diversity is the function’s ability to directly impact spend. The reason why spend with diverse-owned supplier in Tier 1 and 2 is typically used to scope supplier diversity is that it is concretely measurable. The spend provides a concrete, reportable, indication of the degree to which the company is “putting its money where its mouth is”. A pitfall with the diversity pyramid is that not all aspects included are as concretely measurable. Managers need to be aware of the risk that “soft” targets may reflect aspiration more than impact and that measuring progress with impact may be difficult. As a result, further research can study how to measure the relationship between diversity strategy, initiatives and leadership teams of suppliers and their impact on economic inclusion, directly and indirectly. Several of the benefits of supplier diversity referenced in literature (such as access to markets and innovativeness) are harder to measure also so the fact that the pyramid is harder to measure does not dismiss its relevance.

Regarding stimulants, Moet Hennessy’s supplier diversity program proofed a relevant addition to existing sustainability efforts in procurement. Perhaps, more importantly, the fact that it provided a concrete area for community impact and action within the company’s overall diversity and inclusion commitment, enabled stakeholder engagement and organizational buy-in. As an illustration of how the program fits wider ESG ambitions and is seen as an opportunity to grow market relevance, the supplier diversity summit featured in the Moet Hennessy’s social media posts. Concretely, the hiring of new diverse advertising agencies was judged as a business-relevant decision to grow market access and relevance. Obviously, other companies may not (yet) have that level of overall ESG focus in place, making it harder to fit supplier diversity into an already established context for progress. Future research can consider to what degree the relative importance of ESG engagement, versus established ESG programs, enable supplier diversity roll out and acceleration. Is interest sufficient or is a more embedded and resourced ESG program needed to ensure wholehearted engagement and commitment? Equally so, how to balance conflicting priorities of buyers and stakeholders well? If buyers are focused on new categories of spend, supplier diversity may come once the spend is in scope, for example. If a company has ambitious carbon reduction targets, do those get priority in supplier selection over supplier diversity?

The Moet Hennessy program functions with the notion that, if supplier diversity is so good for business and supply chains, there is no need to limit it to niches of suppliers. Instead, there is value in embedding supplier diversity into all supplier opportunities around the globe. The Moet Hennessy program contributes to literature a different country of origin then US or UK-based companies featured in Ram and Smallbone (2003) and Worthington et al. (2008). The program also contributes to literature a new pathway to internationalization, that of a French company importing a supplier diversity program into the USA and expanding it to other countries after. This is different from US companies exporting to the UK as in Worthington et al. (2008). Questions that are not fully resolved, and may provide father for further research, include how and how much localization of supplier diversity may be needed in different markets. How to ensure market access and relevance in different parts of the world? How to reflect the global nature of supply chains in localization of supplier diversity? And do different pathways (US company exporting to the UK, for example, vs French company importing into the USA, vs companies from the UK or other countries starting domestically) lead to different initiatives?

Moet Hennessy innovated approaches to engage stakeholders, seen as a key enabler of program roll out in literature, by introducing champions and by concretely embedding in existing initiatives such as the monthly agency pitches. These efforts do raise the question, what the right balance is between stakeholder engagement, stakeholder ownership and procurement leadership? Is there a risk of stakeholders getting ahead of procurement in rolling out? How much training and tooling will be necessary to ensure procurement can help enact supplier diversity in its sourcing and buying? Will the need of procurement to steward supplier diversity decrease with stakeholder engagement and will this lead to the ability to focus on diverse supplier adoption faster and more so? Past the initial engagement with suppliers during the inaugural supplier diversity summit, Moet Hennessy is now ready to begin to engage suppliers more structurally and to begin to drive growing spend with diverse suppliers. The approach to doing so can be the installment in the program beyond the initial scaling, perhaps a stage of spreading around the world and relevant parts of the supply base. And supporting growing ESG impact from program adoption and compliance. It will be interesting to see whether a similar bottoms-up approach to these stages will, or if a greater role for nonprocurement sponsors, can be granted. The network of ambassadors are already meeting on a quarterly cadence and the VP of diversity, inclusion and equity has begun playing an active role in setting the agenda for these meetings. The balance between procurement ownership of supplier diversity, embedding supplier diversity in category strategies and stakeholder engagement and sponsorship is worthy of further research. Is there a balance in roles between procurement, stakeholders and leadership or is there a need for one or the other to lead which support of the other constituencies? What will be the role of reporting results and monitoring for compliance with the program vs driving positive engagement and a “pull” among suppliers and stakeholders for the program?

4. Conclusion

Supplier diversity is on the rise as companies innovate for sustainability. Supplier diversity holds the benefit of connecting to concrete and measurable buying decisions that companies in the food and beverage and other industries make, with the help of their procurement departments, day in day out. Based upon the insights from Moet Hennessy, this paper introduces pathways to innovate scope, stimulants and scale of supplier diversity in six elements. Pitfalls for managers in pursuing this innovative approach are identified and research questions are developed that can support avoiding those pitfalls and enable further innovation for a more sustainable supply chain. We also identify pathways for spreading and supporting greater supplier diversity in the supply chain.

This paper responds to calls from literature to approach supplier diversity more globally (Sordi et al., 2022). It contributes to research studying supplier diversity in the USA and UK by American and British companies (Worthington et al., 2008), the example of a French company initiating supplier diversity in the USA and scaling it international, to Scotland initially. This paper introduces a more comprehensive definition of supplier diversity, beyond traditional spend with diverse suppliers as called for in literature (Yang et al., 2022). This paper introduces ways to reduce the risk of less than wholehearted adoption of supplier diversity by buyers (as pointed out by Blount, 2021), such as the bottoms-up program development. Further to that, this paper features ways to ensure wider stakeholder engagement in the program (as called for by Tate et al., 2010), through the use of ambassadors and nonprocurement leadership engagement. Finally, it offers an example of a supplier diversity program not initiated by customer compliance stimulants but by competitive differentiation, as called for by Brockhaus et al. (2019). We hope that this paper can inspire further innovation of supplier diversity research and industry initiatives and programs around the world and across industries.

Figures

Figure 1

Moet Hennessy’s product portfolio and global production network

Figure 2

Breakdown of Moet Hennessy’s external spend categories

Figure 3

Innovative scoping of supplier diversity at Moet Hennessy

Table 1

Innovating supplier diversity for sustainability

From	To
Scope
Tier 2/indirect	Tier 1 direct and Tier 2 indirect
Ownership	Ownership and more comprehensive definition of supplier diversity impact
Stimulant
Customer compliance	ESG
Minimum standard	Competitive differentiation
Scale
USA	Global
Procurement-led but not necessarily wholeheartedly engaged	Procurement and business owned

Source: Authors’ own work

Table 2

Moet Hennessy’s supplier diversity roll out initiatives

Type of action
Initiation	Inspired by Walton College student project recommendations the CPO of Moet Hennessy commits to the development and implementation of a supplier diversity program
Project team assigned	Internal procurement project team is assigned the task to develop a supplier diversity program. The team is intentionally diverse in composition, across categories and geographies
Program designed	Featuring goals, definition and governance aspects
Global team meeting	The project team presented the supplier diversity program at the biannual global procurement staff meeting
Nonprocurement leadership	Moet Hennessy’s vice president of inclusion, diversity and equity agrees to sponsor the program
Network of ambassadors	Network of supplier diversity ambassadors across the business launched in an effort to establish stewards and beachheads across the business
First impact summit in New York	VP of inclusion, diversity and equity hosts first internal summit presenting the program to a large stakeholder audience
Embed in existing meetings to ensure consideration	Slots for diverse agencies embedded into monthly agency pitches organized by the marketing organization, raising the profile of diverse suppliers and stewarding opportunities for diverse suppliers
Move beyond USA	Integrating Scotland into supplier diversity program, following the relocation of the US buyer that helped develop the US start of the program
Standing event	Second annual impact summit

Source: Authors’ own work

Table 3

Innovative pathways for managers and research based upon insights from Moet Hennessy

From	To	Insights	Pitfalls
Scope
Tier 2/indirect	Tier 1 direct and Tier 2 indirect	Multiple pathways to impact and innovation	Limited spend coverage
Ownership	Ownership and more comprehensive definition of supplier diversity impact	In addition to Tier 1 and Tier 2 spend with diverse owned suppliers also features: the diversity and inclusion agenda and initiatives of suppliers; the diversity of the leadership of the supplying company; and supplier contributions to diverse communities	Measurability
Stimulants
Customer compliance	ESG	Fitting within existing sustainable procurement program at Moet Hennessy and company priorities around ESG. Supplier diversity helps drive market relevance (e.g. agencies)	Limited ESG focus and capability in an organization means that there is a less of larger strategy to fit into
Minimum standard	Competitive differentiation	Sourced from business school collaboration, driven be differentiating opportunity, not customer compliance	Conflicting objectives for buyers can lead to minimum standard adoption of supplier diversity, not a comprehensive and differentiating adoption
Scale
USA	Global	Gradual roll out with ability to localize for market relevance	Limited global footprint, resourcing and organizational integration
Procurement-led but not necessarily wholeheartedly engaged	Procurement and business owned	Bottoms up procurement initiative with business ownership. Stakeholder champions, internal summit and embedding in existing initiatives (e.g. monthly pitches)	Top-down mandate could lead to less than wholehearted buyer engagement. Training, stewarding and tooling support to avoid procurement being outpaced by business stakeholders

Source: Authors’ own work

Notes

1. Dominique Lebigot is the CPO of Moet Hennessy sponsoring the collaboration with the Sam M Walton College of Business, adopting the student team suggestion to develop a supplier diversity program and assigning the development of a supplier diversity program to a team of buyers. Shannon Sexton is the buyer that led a team of buyers through the development of the supplier diversity program, presented at the all buyer meeting and the supplier diversity summit. Antoine Bagot is Shannon Sexton’s manager and a member of Dominique Lebigot’s global procurement leadership team. He sponsored and supported the buyer team during the development and the roll out of the supplier diversity program.

2. www.linkedin.com/posts/moethennessy_mo%C3%ABt-hennessy-usa-hosted-itsfirst-annual-activity-6997978983992553473-zYK8?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

3. Supplier IO (2023) 2023 Supplier diversity benchmarking report, Supplier IO; www.supplier.io/2023-supplier-diversity-benchmarking-report