Sustainable Procurement Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The current situation observed in the seafood industry demonstrates that responsible and certified seafood produced in Asia as well as other developing regions is often exported out to Western markets such as Europe and the US, due to a higher demand and higher willingness to pay. This renders responsible and certified seafood to be shipped out of Asia and results in a market where responsible and certified seafood is systematically underrepresented. Hence, the lack of supply of responsible seafood from regional sources has hindered companies’ efforts to source responsibly, despite a commitment to do so.
With Asia’s increasing disposable income and growing awareness by consumers for responsible and certified seafood, greater opportunities can be leveraged upon by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to increase the supply and demand of responsible seafood in the region.
The Responsible Seafood Tool (RESET) is developed as WWF believes that there is opportunity for change in empowering businesses in Asia to source more responsibly, particularly for a local favourite - seafood. Responsible seafood sourcing helps to reduce negative consequences to the environment, in the form of biodiversity loss, seascape degradation, and resource depletion, as well as to reduce lost livelihoods displaced by depleted fishstock or polluted landscapes and seascapes. The tool seeks to lower the barriers for businesses to source for responsible seafood, and to directly mobilize improved management and performance of fisheries and aquaculture in Asia.
In a nutshell, RESET aims to provide easy access to the supply of responsible seafood for interested buyers, while also supporting Asian aquaculture and fisheries by providing business incentives for certification. Seafood buyers enjoy the access of a variety of responsible seafood from Asia, at the same time, they enable WWF to propel responsible seafood producers along their journey to achieve Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) or Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification.

U.S. local governments purchase $1.72 trillion of goods and services annually that contribute to global climate change and other environmental problems. Cities that successfully implement environmental purchasing policies can mitigate these environmental concerns while saving money and demonstrating their environmental leadership. However, cities confront numerous challenges when implementing an environmental purchasing policy. This chapter identifies the facilitators and barriers of implementing an environmental purchasing policy. It draws on the experiences within the City of Phoenix as an example and offers eight recommendations for how the City of Phoenix and similar cities can integrate environmental purchasing more fully into their existing purchasing processes.

With the current emerging development pattern in Malaysia, E-Government has been unveiled by the Malaysian Government to be one of the multimedia super corridor flagship applications to implement digital technology to improve government operations. Eprocurement was originally utilized by businesses to minimize turnaround times and prices, but recently it was often used as a platform for sustainable procurement. However, there have been few attempts to investigate E-procurement technology in Malaysia concerning sustainable procurement. Also, there is no consistent and reliable framework of Eprocurement technology for sustainable procurement practices. The focal area of this research is ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia, the population of these organizations is 55, sample size (N)=162 respondents including procurement managers, executives and staff which are involved directly or indirectly in the process of procuring products and services. This study is conceptual and aims to explore how the adoption of E-procurement technologies influence sustainable procurement practices within ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia.

For green technology firms, government's shifting preference for sustainable products and services is likely to become an increasingly important market factor. Green technology firms are thus in an excellent position to respond to greater calls for environmentally friendly products and services and derive market advantages from doing so. Moreover, green technology firms possess the knowledge, expertise, and experience that can increase local governments' SPP adoption and implementation success. Drawing from the results of two recent studies, this paper presents five reasons why green technology firms should care about local governments' recent trend toward SPP adoption.

The Health sector can play a significant role towards achieving sustainable development by putting sustainability at the heart of procurement activities. This research analyses the differences relating to how two different National Healthcare Systems (NHS), the Italian and the British, are managing their Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) in terms of supplier's and bidders' sustainable evaluation through specific practices and criteria. The research mainly adopts quantitative inquiry using a survey with procurement professionals from public sector healthcare organisations. A Likert's scale questionnaire was designed to test seven hypotheses covering SPP criteria analysed using Fisher's Exact and Mann-Whitney U tests. While the UK health sector organisations seem to have a propensity for requesting suppliers with an improvement in environmental performances over time and a compliance with voluntary social accountability standards, the Italian organisations seem more focused on the mandatory laws and regulations concerning environment and safety. Other interesting differences lie in the requests to the suppliers of the compliance with voluntary standards related to packaging. The research is just limited to two countries; future studies aimed at comparing SPP criteria for the public healthcare among the other European countries is recommended. Moreover, the findings raised issues such as the trade-off between costs of the product and environmental criteria, the use of national and international standards as supplier's evaluation criteria, the carbon footprint as a way for gaining more trust from local stake-holders and the possible impact of suppliers' ethical scandals in the public sector.

- by Sarfo Mensah
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

The practice of procurement in Ghana seems to have neglected sustainability considerations. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which public procurement practice in Ghanaian construction industry incorporates sustainability and the challenges that faces the practice of Sustainable Procurement (SP). First, procurement practitioners were interviewed to find out their understanding of SP in light of the environmental, economical and social goals of SP, and to also identify challenges that face the practice of SP in Ghana. Second, RII analysis was performed to measure the significance of challenges identified through the interview and from literature. It was found out that, by perception, SP is adequately addressed by the Procurement Law operating in Ghana; Act 663 (2003). However, among practitioners interviewed, there exists low level of awareness and understanding of the environmental, economic and social concerns of SP. Lack of understanding of the SP concept was determined as a major challenge that faces its practice in Ghana.

- by Sarfo Mensah
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

In the last 40 years, Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has moved from a transactional role in materials management towards a more strategic role, aligned to long-term business requirements. This evolutionary process can be represented by Maturity models: in the advanced stages of a maturity model, there is a broader scope in the activities which PSM is responsible for, and a deeper impact in the business performance. However, traditional PSM performance indicators, like material cost savings, are not appropriated to evaluate its overall performance at the latest stages. The combination of PSM Maturity Model and "Return on Capital Employed"(ROCE) allows to evaluate the benefit that the evolution through the more advanced stages of the PSM professionalism brings to the firm financial performance. This paper details both models and discusses the methodology to be used to prove that companies with higher PSM maturity level will present superior financial results.

Purpose: Most barriers and enablers of sustainable projects are related to procurement. This study
proposes a framework for evaluating green procurement practices throughout the lifecycle of road
construction projects and demonstrates its application through an Australian case study.
Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on linking the phases of road construction with
incentive mechanisms for proactively motivating behavioural change. A holistic view on utilised and
potential incentives is attempted with a literature review and a state-of-practice review. The latter is
based on interviews and 90 policy and procurement documents across five Australian states.
Findings: An evaluation framework with seven procurement stages is suggested to describe current
state green procurement incentives throughout the delivery lifecycle of road construction projects.
The Australian case study was found to provide useful data to identify gaps and strong points of the
different states regarding their level of integration of sustainability and greenhouse gas emissions
(GHG) reduction elements in their procurement practices. This understanding was used to draw
recommendations on future advancement of green procurement.
Originality/value: Government entities across the globe can impact considerably the achievement of
sustainability and GHG targets, by using their procurement practices and requirements to create
incentives for contractors and suppliers to engage in more GHG conscious practices. The present
study provides a systematic account of how green procurement practices can be underpinned using
the Australian road construction industry as a case study, and distinguish between strong and weak
links in the green procurement chain to draw recommendations for future initiatives.

- by Collins Ameyaw
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

The management of Inventory and warehouse is crucial to maximize value of the supply chain of every organization. Unnecessary movement, over-staffing, pilferage, over-stocking, understocking can all be minimized with good management of this area of business operation. The use of ICT has become a strong tool driving the success of many organization's supply chains. Similarly, inventory and warehouse management can realize a lot of benefits if proper ICT tools are identified and used well. The study aims at assessing the effects of ICT on the performance of inventory and warehouse operations. The study revealed the adoption of few ICT tools in the management of Inventory and Warehouse Operations. Again, some of the ICT tools were underutilized as a result of major challenges. The researchers found a positive relationship between the use of ICT tools and the performance of inventory and warehouse operations even with the ICT tools that were underutilized.

- by Meshach Awuah and +1
- •
- Management, Project Management, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering

Purpose -The aim of the paper is to present how sustainability as a concept supports the use of locally-sourced food in public catering, and the issues that arise from that policy objective and their implications for suppliers and purchasers. Design/methodology/approach -First, the paper explains the characteristics of local food chains and the concept of sustainability based on a literature review. It then outlines the stages of the food procurement process in public food catering in Finland, focussing on the delivery of potatoes from a local producer to a public caterer providing school meals. The case study identifies the dimensions of sustainability. Findings -First, the criteria defining sustainability remain unclear. Second, to overcome the cost disadvantages brought about by its small-scale production and high delivery costs, locally-sourced food should add some extra value. Short food supply chains have advantages over long ones, however, they are not sustainable per se.

In the procurement process the decisions of project teams determine if the potential of sustainable procurement is attained. To optimize this, project teams should be encouraged to adopt new behaviour. The academic literature awards an encouraging role to the change agent. A comparison of the role of change agents in seven Dutch public procurement projects shows that change agents play an important role in sustainable procurement projects and help project teams progress towards sustainable procurement.

Sustainable procurement aims at ensuring smooth and uninterrupted flow of goods, services and materials in our business world of today without endangering lives and environment. One of the major contributions of the procurement profession, especially while supporting million dollar strategic projects in the oil and gas world is to demonstrate value to the organizations strategic plan, and ineptly contribute to business risk reduction, ensuring both strategic and commercial aspects of the project are adequately considered when making strategic business decisions.

- by Samuel Idika
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

Purpose – Most barriers and enablers of sustainable projects are related to procurement. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for evaluating green procurement practices throughout the lifecycle of road construction projects and demonstrates its application through an Australian case study. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on linking the phases of road construction with incentive mechanisms for proactively motivating behavioural change. A holistic view on utilised and potential incentives is attempted with a literature review and a state-of-practice review. The latter is based on interviews and 90 policy and procurement documents across five Australian states. Findings – An evaluation framework with seven procurement stages is suggested to describe current state green procurement incentives throughout the delivery lifecycle of road construction projects. The Australian case study was found to provide useful data to identify gaps and strong points of the...

With the current emerging development pattern in Malaysia, E-Government has been unveiled by the Malaysian Government to be one of the multimedia super corridor flagship applications to implement digital technology to improve government operations. E-procurement was originally utilized by businesses to minimize turnaround times and prices, but recently it was often used as a platform for sustainable procurement. However, there have been few attempts to investigate E-procurement technology in Malaysia concerning sustainable procurement. Also, there is no consistent and reliable framework of E-procurement technology for sustainable procurement practices. The focal area of this research is ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia, the population of these organizations is 55, sample size (N)=162 respondents including procurement managers, executives, and staff which are involved directly or indirectly in the process of procuring products and services. This study is conceptual and aims to explore how the adoption of E-procurement technologies influence sustainable procurement practices within ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia.

Sustainable procurement is often used to reduce negative environmental impacts related to production and consumption. Several studies in the sustainable procurement literature have identified potential drivers of and barriers to sustainable procurement, which are often organisational in nature. Using an organisational perspective, this paper examines if and how three organisational factors – top management support, expertise and commitment – influence the degree of sustainable procurement in procurement projects in the Dutch national government. The article concludes that both organizational factors (especially commitment) and the actions of individual actors are important.

- by Sandra Groeneveld and +1
- •
- Organizational Change, Public Procurement, Sustainable Procurement

Construction scholars suggest that procurement processes can be used as mechanisms to change construction industry practices. This paper discusses industry changes as a response to the calls for integration of sustainability ideals into construction practices. Because major infrastructure construction has been identified as a key producer of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), this study explores collaborative procurement models that have been used to facilitate mitigation of GHGE. The study focuses on the application of non-price incentives and rewards that work together as a binary mechanism. Data were collected using mixed-methods: government document content analysis was complemented with data collected through focus groups and individual interviews with both clients and contractors. This report includes examples of greening procurement agendas for three Australian road authorities relating to collaborative procurement project delivery models. Three collaborative procurement models, Alliance Consortium, Early Contractor Involvement and Public Private Partnerships provide evidence of construction projects that were completed early. It can also be argued that both clients and contractors are rewarded through collaborative project delivery. The incentive of early completion is rewarded with reduction of GHGE. This positive environmental outcome, based on a dual benefit and non-price sustainability criteria, suggests a step towards changed industry practices though the use of green procurement models.

Abstract: Organizations the world-over are seeking to identify key organizational function that enhances performance. The procurement function has emerged as a crucial department due to its strategic importance in acquiring inputs to production processes and its contribution to the firm’s competitiveness. The study analyzed identified key drivers of the department and targeted employees from the procurement divisions at Olkaria. The study adapted a descriptive technique where structured questionnaires were used. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics by us of SPSS Version 22. The key drivers of sustainable procurement were found to be, environmental, social and economic in nature.

This article deals with sustainable forest management in a legal
perspective, emphasizing its rules, field work aspects and technical standards
governing the matter. It also relates forest management to other issues, such as
reforestation, deforestation and forest certification. The relationship of forest
management with other legal matters, such as the legal protected areas, public
procurement and forest concessions are considered.

Achieving sustainable development is one of the challenges of Bangladesh in its attempt to attain the middle-income country status by 2021. Recognising the strategic importance of public procurement, the study seeks to explore the opportunities and approaches of addressing sustainability within the existing purview of procurement policy. A semi structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 60 procurement practitioners. Economic consideration is given the highest priority while making purchasing decision. Purchasing unit can incorporate sustainability criteria although there is a possibility of limiting competition if they add. Although there is no specific guideline, various sustainability criteria could be incorporated within the existing framework of procurement. Specification was the most feasible ways of addressing sustainability followed by pre-qualification, contract performance clause, contract award criteria, demand analysis and negotiation. Given the increased attention of achieving sustainable development, the study provides fresh input to inform policy development in Bangladesh.

- by Md Saifur Rahman
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

Sanchez, Adriana & Hampson, Keith D. (2012) Sustainable road infrastructure procurement in Australia. In Procurement, Innovation and Green Growth : the Story Continues. International Institute for Sustainable Development, Winnipeg,... more

The Health sector can play a significant role towards achieving sustainable development by putting sustainability at the heart of procurement activities. This research analyses the differences relating to how two different National Healthcare Systems (NHS), the Italian and the British, are managing their Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) in terms of supplier's and bidders' sustainable evaluation through specific practices and criteria. The research mainly adopts quantitative inquiry using a survey with procurement professionals from public sector healthcare organisations. A Likert's scale questionnaire was designed to test seven hypotheses covering SPP criteria analysed using Fisher's Exact and Mann-Whitney U tests. While the UK health sector organisations seem to have a propensity for requesting suppliers with an improvement in environmental performances over time and a compliance with voluntary social accountability standards, the Italian organisations seem more focused on the mandatory laws and regulations concerning environment and safety. Other interesting differences lie in the requests to the suppliers of the compliance with voluntary standards related to packaging. The research is just limited to two countries; future studies aimed at comparing SPP criteria for the public healthcare among the other European countries is recommended. Moreover, the findings raised issues such as the trade-off between costs of the product and environmental criteria, the use of national and international standards as supplier's evaluation criteria, the carbon footprint as a way for gaining more trust from local stakeholders and the possible impact of suppliers' ethical scandals in the public sector.

- by Jeni Christensen
- •
- Business Ethics, Ethics, Supply Chain Management, Procurement
- by Jeni Christensen
- •
- Business Ethics, Ethics, Procurement, Sustainable Procurement in Construction

The current global business environment presents a strong competition, with cost pressures, focus on new products development and higher customers expectations. To reach that, the fast moving consumer goods companies, leveraged by their global scales, started to manage raw materials costs in a more competitive way. The internationalization of trade however brought a new competitive scenario among a powerful trade, a concentrated supplier base and manufacturing companies. Governance on these new global chains has become than an issue to be managed. Gereffi and others have developed a theoretical framework to explain the governance patterns in global value chains (GVC), considering key variables to establish the type of governance: complexity of transactions, ability to codify transactions and capabilities in the suppliers. This paper proposes a process to quantify these key variables, presenting eight business dimensions and several measurable key performance indicators to support the fully understanding of the governance in GVC.

Earlier studies had indicated that lack of awareness pose the most significant barrier to sustainable procurement implementation among procurement managers. This situation will cause many problems such as carbon emissions, waste production, and water consumption. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of sustainable procurement practices amongst procurement managers in the furniture manufacturing industry located in Batu Pahat, Malaysia. The researcher conducted interviews with six managers. The audio-recordings of the interview protocols were transcribed and the data were analyzed using three methods which are data reduction, data displays and conclusion drawing. The findings of this study indicate that most of the companies purchase materials which are more environmental friendly and collect waste material for recycling purposes. This study is important for the manufacturing industry as a guideline to implement sustainable procurement practices in their operation and production processes.

- by Shiau Wei Chan
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

Rapid economic growth, increasing urbanization and globalization have increased customers’ tastes and preferences for the desire to have access to new technologies. The challenge has been the disposal of the discarded, old or the defective electronic wastes. Africa is more challenged as a result of the relatively low income levels of citizens which result is a high demand for such electronic waste since they have comparatively very low prices. Africa has almost become a dumping place for electronic waste which has enormous effects on economic, social and environmental sustainability. This research seeks to find out how a collaborative approach among key stakeholders (government, manufacturers/ assemblers, media and waste management companies) in the management of electronic waste can contribute to curb this menace. Based on a structured questionnaire, data was collected from staff and management of these stakeholders from selected institutions and organizations in Ghana. The findings indicate that all key stakeholders have a role to play in the control and management of electronic waste and their roles have a positive effect in the achievement of a sustainable e- waste management. However, the effects of the roles played by waste management companies and the media seems to be more significant than that of manufacturing/ Assembling companies and the government. The conclusion for the study is that, every stakeholder has a role to play in the fight against unsustainable e- waste management, however, there is the need for governments to establish control mechanisms and play an administration role to collaborate with all stakeholders.

- by Simon-Peter Addai and +2
- •
- Industrial And Labor Relations, Human Resource Management, Stress Management, Sustainable Procurement

Sustainable procurement is often used to reduce negative environmental impacts related to production and consumption. Several studies in the sustainable procurement literature have identified potential drivers of and barriers to sustainable procurement, which are often organisational in nature. Using an organisational perspective, this paper examines if and how three organisational factors -top management support, expertise and commitment -influence the degree of sustainable procurement in procurement projects in the Dutch national government. The article concludes that both organizational factors (especially commitment) and the actions of individual actors are important.

- by Sandra Groeneveld and +1
- •
- Organizational Change, Public Procurement, Sustainable Procurement

Some U.S. local governments are leveraging public procurement to meet their sustainability goals. However, does the simultaneous pursuit of multiple sustainability objectives potentially slow down the speed of procurement processes? We suggest that the simultaneous pursuit of multiple sustainability objectives through procurement is related to decision making speed. Additionally, we argue that centralized decision-making structures might moderate this relationship. Drawing on a representative sample of more than 200 U.S. local governments, we demonstrate that for low-cost purchases, as the number of policy objectives increases, so too does the average length of time for approval. We also find evidence of an interactive relationship between decision-making structures and the number of existing sustainability policies pursued simultaneously. For routine low-cost and routine high-cost purchases, we find evidence that as the centralization of procurement decision making increases, the m...

This article deals with sustainable forest management in a legal perspective, emphasizing its rules, field work aspects and technical standards governing the matter. It also relates forest management to other issues, such as reforestation, deforestation and forest certification. The relationship of forest management with other legal matters, such as the legal protected areas, public procurement and forest concessions are considered.

The e-GP system has introduced in Bangladesh in the year of 2011. As mentioned earlier, the system started its function with 291 PEs of 04 departments of 04 core ministries that are involved in a considerable volume of procurement activities related to works in each year. At present all ministries are linked to the system with all the offices at divisional, districts and sub-districts level. Since its inception, a sharp rise of the online procurement system has been observed in terms of value and volume of tenders. Only 100 procuring agencies (PAs) are not using the system among 1324 procuring agencies in total under different ministries and divisions till June, 2018 . The total number of registered tenderers stood at 46,144 in the middle of 2018, which was 295 in 2011-2012 and 33,778 in 2016-2017. A total of 190,131 tenders have been floated through e-Tendering in the e-GP system in the fiscal year 2017-2018 showing a continuation of upward trend from a total of 102,962 in 2016-17 and only an insignificant number of 14 in 2011-12. The amount of tender value rose to BDT 1618690 m in 2017-18 from BDT 91072 m in 2016-17, which was only BDT 240 m in 2011-12. The training activities are going on for enhancing the capability and capacity of the PE users, tenderers and other stakeholders.

- by Khokan Saha
- •
- Sustainable Procurement

Kamu alımı ile Devlet anayasada belirtilen görevlerini yerine getirmek ve halka hizmet sunmak için gerek duyulan ihtiyaçları tedarik etmeyi amaçlar. İhtiyaç duyulan mal veya hizmet alımı ile yapım işini de en uygun fiyatla temin ederek yapmaya çalışır(Altınışık 2011, 14)
Kamu alımlarının ülke ekonomisinde önemli büyüklüğe sahip olması sebebiyle kamu kaynaklarının etkin, verimli ve ekonomik olarak kullanılması ile kamuoyu denetimine açık, şeffaf ve rekabet koşulları içerisinde gerçekleştirilmesi gerekmektedir. Bu sebeple kamu alımlarının belirli ilkeler ve standartlar içerişinde olmasını düzenleyen ihale kanunları düzenlenmektedir. Ülkemizde AB ve uluslararası standartlar çerçevesinde 2003 yılında yürürlüğe giren 4734 sayılı Kamu İhale Kanunu düzenlenmiştir. Kanun, kamu hukukuna tâbi olan, kamunun denetimi altında bulunan veya kamu kaynağı kullanan kamu kurum ve kuruluşlarının yapacakları ihaleleri kapsamaktadır.
Kanunun ilk düzenlendiğinde ihale usulleri açık ihale usulü, belli istekliler arasında ihale usulü, pazarlık usulü ve doğrudan temin usulü olarak düzenlenmiştir. Temel ihale usulleri arasında sayılan doğrudan temin usulü ise 30.07.2003 tarihinde 4964 sayılı Kanun’la yapılan değişiklik sonrası ihale usulü olmadığı gerekçesi ile ihale usulleri arasından çıkartılmış ve ayrı bir alım yöntemi olarak yeniden düzenlenmiştir. Bu değişiklik sonrası temel ihale usulleri; açık ihale usulü, belli istekliler arasında ihale usulü ve pazarlık usulü olarak yer almıştır. Doğrudan temin, ihale usulleri dışında kalan ve Kanunda belirtilen durumlarda kullanılabilecek bir alım türü olarak belirlenmiştir.
Bu yazımızda öncelikli olarak doğrudan temin yönteminin tanımına, hangi durumlarda kullanılabileceğine, doğrudan temin ile gerçekleştirilen alım verilerine ve alım yönteminin kullanılmasında dikkat edilmesi gereken hususların neler olduğuna değinilecektir. Piyasa araştırması yapılırken fiyat teklifi alımının nasıl olması gerektiği üzerine değerlendirmede bulunulacak ve uygulamadan gülümseten bir fiyat teklifi örneği verilecektir. Sonuç kısmında ise doğrudan teminin genel değerlendirilmesi ve konu hakkında öneriler sunulacaktır.

This book explores how the public and private sectors have dealt with sustainability aspects in their procurement and supply chain management systems, with a special regard to the Brazilian experience in sustainable procurement.... more

- by Jolien Grandia and +2
- •
- Organizational Change, Public Procurement, Sustainable Procurement