What’s happening this week at the intersection of management and technology: Three stages of digital transformation; questions for digital disruptors; IoT and blockchain in the supply chain.

Multi-sourcing can lessen the risk of supply chain disruption. But it introduces new risks of its own. Companies should explore five questions before moving forward: Are all the sources in the same geographic area? What will it cost to develop a second supplier? How compatible is the alternative source? Are the additional CSR risks worth it? And will primary suppliers start holding back their new innovations?

Peter Drucker defined the work of business leaders by three principal tasks: delivering financial results, making work and workers productive, and managing a company’s social impacts. Technological advances have transformed — and continue to transform — the world in myriad ways since Drucker published that definition in 1974. But technology hasn’t changed Drucker’s tasks. Instead, it is giving rise to new and better ways of executing them. This new column aims to help you identify big ideas and new tactics at the intersection of technology and management.

Unlike agriculture, where cutting-edge technologies are being aggressively adopted, forestry and its related industries are something of a technology laggard. But the prospect of the industry using sensors in the field, both in sawmills and even embedded within trees themselves, is emerging. Eric Hansen and Scott Leavengood, both professors at Oregon State University’s Wood Science and Engineering department, discuss how the Internet of Things could help drive efficiency and improve quality in the forestry sector.

An online questionnaire by the authors of the MIT Sloan Management Review article “Integrating Supply and Demand” helps users assess how well their company’s supply chains are helping meet product demand — and serve key customers. The self-assessment lets users rate their companies in five areas in the demand and supply integration spectrum: relevant value focus, integrated knowledge sharing, strategic resource allocation, integrated behavior, and capacity and demand balance.

The webinar speakers explain how proactive managers create innovative, dynamic organizations that survive and prosper under any circumstances. They show how resilient enterprises adapt successfully to turbulence and design resilient assets, products and processes, highlighting companies that have improved shareholder value in turbulent times. And, they demonstrate a research-based methodology to identify important supply chain vulnerabilities and set priorities for strengthening capabilities.

To compete in different strategic segments at the same time, companies need close coordination between the sales side of the company and supply chain operations. Just as importantly, joining the supply and demand sides of an enterprise presents an opportunity for efficiency and value creation. “A company may have an excellent sales and marketing team and a top-flight operations team and still deliver the wrong benefits to a customer,” the authors note. This article includes an online questionnaire for assessing the current stage of your company’s demand and supply integration, with suggestions for how to improve.

Wood Turner has been working in sustainability for 20 years. In 2006 he left his work at a sustainability and brand strategy firm in Seattle to lead Climate Counts, a nonprofit incubated within Stonyfield which scores and ranks large companies on their efforts to address climate change. Now VP of sustainability innovation at Stonyfield, Turner continues his work on bringing climate-conscious practices into the core of business operations. In an interview, Turner describes the collaborative processes that make this strategy work.

With over 435 eco-label programs worldwide, how can companies avoid betting on the wrong one? Authors Magali A. Delmas (UCLA Anderson School of Management), Nicholas Nairn-Birch (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and Michaela Balzarova (Lincoln University) detail a three-part framework for companies to use. The framework evaluates eco-labels along three dimensions: consumer understanding and awareness, consumer confidence and willingness to pay.

The MIT SMR and BCG 2012 Sustainability and Innovation research report “Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point” prompted an invitation to participate in a White House Sustainable Supply Chain Dialogue on March 30 in Washington, DC.

Multinational corporations are under growing pressure to make sure their contractors and subcontractors in China meet environmental standards. Yet traditional approaches to ensuring environmental, health and safety compliance, such as checklist audits, have proved problematic. This article recommends that organizations work closely with suppliers, providing incentives for identifying, disclosing and addressing problems and establishing collaborative relationships with NGOs and industry groups.

How fast are businesses adopting sustainability-driven management? The new Sustainability & Innovation Study identifies two distinct camps — ‘embracers’ and ‘cautious adopters’ — and offers a snapshot of how the management future will look.

The author of “Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink: Why 40% of Your Business Is Unprofitable and How to Fix It” offers techniques to improve an organization’s profitability.

Does vertical integration make sense, particularly when an industry is moving offshore to regions of cheaper labor?

Dual accountability between a buyer and its strategic suppliers, through tools such as a Two-Way Scorecard, is a new and tangible approach to improving supply chain relationships.

As companies rely increasingly on external suppliers, there is an emerging and compelling need for “maestros”