Public healthcare practices and criteria for a sustainable procurement: A comparative study between UK and Italy

Abstract

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 relatinged to how two different National Healthcare Systems (NHS), the Italian and the British, are managing their Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP). In particular, 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

Green Public Procurement in the Academic Literature

“…In line with the results reported by our study, Grandia et al (2015) and Chiarini et al (2017) make a call for comparative studies, Roman (2017) considers that an investigation "incorporating institutional, stakeholder and transformational leadership theories" would be interesting. Fet et al (2011) consider that a holistic approach is needed, linking "ecological thinking" to the general procurement strategies of local public authorities/municipalities.…”

Exploiting the Potential of Public Procurement: Opportunities for Circular Economy

“…Sustainable and green public procurement both have literature streams that are closely linked to CE, for example, greening the value chain and providing opportunities for environmentally preferable products and business models (Roman 2017;Walker and Phillips 2009;Chiarini et al 2017;Testa et al 2016;Walker and Brammer 2009;Carter and Dresner 2001;Min and Galle 1997). In addition, the EC has set out several key actions regarding GPP, such as including requirements for durability and reparability in the EU GPP criteria, and providing training on CE, as supportive tools for the Circular Economy Package (European Commission 2015).…”

The Promotion of Environmental Management in the South Korean Health Sector—Case Study

“…In addition to the waste or water, Chiarini, Opoku, and Vagnoni (2017) compared sustainable procurement practices at public hospitals in Italy and the United Kingdom by analyzing the responses to seven questions regarding sustainable procurement. They found that the Italian hospitals tended to focus on compliance with laws or regulations, while the British organizations tended to ask suppliers to improve their performance over time [31]. However, that study did not further investigate the factors that led to those differences.…”