TY - JOUR
T1 - A framework for understanding sustainable public purchasing
AU - Behravesh, Shirley Ann
AU - Darnall, Nicole
AU - Bretschneider, Stuart
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation for funding a portion of this research.
Funding Information:
Resources are the physical assets that the public organization owns and/or controls (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993; Barney, 1991). They include financial resources, property, and equipment (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993). Resources help organizations establish a culture for adopting a policy and create a capacity for organizations to follow through with policy implementation (Nakamura et al., 2001). Within the public sector, most financial resources generally derive from tax revenue and are often determined through a political process involving external stakeholders. However, these resources also can be generated from other external sources, such as grants (Darnall and Edwards, 2006). Conversely, scarce resources are associated with an organization's low internal competency and the inability to include sustainability criteria in public purchasing (Testa et al., 2012), which inhibits SPP adoption (Filho et al., 2019). In some cases, a local government may apply for grants or technical assistance at the state or national level to help supplement its resources and build capacity. By drawing on these external resources, public organizations with otherwise lagging capabilities can mitigate the cost of adopting sustainability practices such as SPP (Darnall and Edwards, 2006), thus making SPP adoption possible.Similarly, public organizations that have expertise with basic pollution prevention, energy conservation, recycling policies, innovations, potential substitute products and related research and technologies, have developed knowledge-based competencies that answer questions and solve problems about specific sustainability concerns. This knowledge involves acquiring and assembling information about how to manage and to reduce waste across different multiple departments and settings (Ambekar et al., 2019). Organizations that have expertise with complementary sustainability policies, practices, tools, and regulations for supporting SPP, coordinate employees around common issues and encourage them to share their tacit knowledge about the organization's internal operations in order to minimize impact to the natural environment (Hart, 1995). These organizations are more likely to have invested in training their employees and can more competently leverage their skills and expertise in a way that helps them fulfill the organization's strategic expectations. They are also more likely to have greater experience with measuring organizational progress towards achieving certain environmental and social objectives and, therefore, can apply their skills more effortlessly towards the adoption of other sustainability initiatives (Darnall and Edwards, 2006). Finally, public organizations that invest in training employees on issues related to sustainability are more likely to see how SPP may help achieve their broader sustainability goals and lead to sustainability innovations within the private sector (Darnall and Edwards, 2006).Transformational leaders, in particular, are capable of pursuing new initiatives under high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity and lead to innovative outcomes (Roman, 2017). They are often champions of new sustainability ideas that get diffused across the organization (Anderson and Bateman, 2000; Singh et al., 2020). For these reasons, pressures from leaders who support sustainability are more likely to also pressure organizations to adopt SPP (Roman, 2017; Islam et al., 2017; Brammer and Walker, 2011).At the helm of all these discussions was the City's Director of Purchasing, who was the central champion for exploring SPP. He had a fundamental interest and commitment to sustainability. This positionality made him more likely to endorse sustainability initiatives (Zutshi and Sohal, 2004) and develop shared sets of beliefs, values, and activities within his department to do the same. His ideas were reinforced by the City's Director of Sustainability and Resilience and its Deputy Mayor, both of whom were strong advocates for sustainability across the City. Related to the City's procurement staff, the Director of Procurement stated, “I think that the vast majority of our employees would like to do the right thing when it comes to purchasing sustainable products. However, price tradeoff is an issue to many of our employees,” (Dogar et al., 2019). This was true even though the City had already implemented “value for purchasing.” Although tepid staff support created a less favorable setting for SPP adoption, the Director of Procurement noted that he felt SPP opportunities would be greater “when the price is equal to or less than a non-sustainable product” (Dogar et al., 2019).We thank the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation for funding a portion of this research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors
PY - 2022/11/20
Y1 - 2022/11/20
N2 - Increasing scholarship across numerous literatures discuss the significant promise that sustainable public purchasing (SPP) has for reducing negative environmental impacts throughout the supply chain. As governments worldwide have begun embracing this promise, researchers note that we lack a broader conceptual framework that articulates the motivations for public organizations to adopt SPP, in part because existing literature is widely dispersed across multiple fields and journals. We address this gap by undertaking a significant literature review and content analysis to develop a cogent framework of SPP adoption. The resulting theoretical framework reveals four critical macro-themes associated with SPP adoption: capacity, culture, stakeholders, and institutional setting. Capacity, culture, and internal stakeholders relate to the internal organizational setting, although they are shaped by pressures from external stakeholders and nested within the broader institutional setting. The framework and themes are illustrated by applying them to the City of Tempe's (Arizona, USA) decision to adopt SPP. The research sets the stage for future empirical studies related to SPP adoption and implementation success, both of which are inherently linked.
AB - Increasing scholarship across numerous literatures discuss the significant promise that sustainable public purchasing (SPP) has for reducing negative environmental impacts throughout the supply chain. As governments worldwide have begun embracing this promise, researchers note that we lack a broader conceptual framework that articulates the motivations for public organizations to adopt SPP, in part because existing literature is widely dispersed across multiple fields and journals. We address this gap by undertaking a significant literature review and content analysis to develop a cogent framework of SPP adoption. The resulting theoretical framework reveals four critical macro-themes associated with SPP adoption: capacity, culture, stakeholders, and institutional setting. Capacity, culture, and internal stakeholders relate to the internal organizational setting, although they are shaped by pressures from external stakeholders and nested within the broader institutional setting. The framework and themes are illustrated by applying them to the City of Tempe's (Arizona, USA) decision to adopt SPP. The research sets the stage for future empirical studies related to SPP adoption and implementation success, both of which are inherently linked.
KW - Capacity
KW - Culture
KW - Institutional setting
KW - Stakeholders
KW - Sustainable public procurement adoption
KW - Sustainable public purchasing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139085131&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85139085131&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.134122
DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.134122
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85139085131
SN - 0959-6526
VL - 376
JO - Journal of Cleaner Production
JF - Journal of Cleaner Production
M1 - 134122
ER -