Social Public Purchasing: Addressing a Critical Void in Public Purchasing Research

Abstract

Since governments are the largest buyers globally, they have enormous purchasing power. Government purchasing, therefore, has potential to be leveraged to improve social outcomes, such as helping disadvantaged communities, ensuring labor rights, and minimizing negative environmental impacts. However, as yet, there is little understanding about social public purchasing research in the field of public administration. We provide a theoretical framework for organizing research around social public purchasing. We then survey both the scholarly and practitioner research on social public purchasing in order to develop a clear understanding of the critical knowledge gaps and the potential for important social public purchasing research.

How can procurement create (sustainable) public value under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal?

“…Although not perfect, government quasi-markets-like all markets-respond to demand and do so efficiently. In this sense, agencies could use the nature of markets to generate demand for products that minimize the negative imprint on the environment and improve social equity (Hafsa et al, 2021). Using purchasing and contracting to achieve social and environmental policy goals is known as sustainable public procurement (Alkadry et al, 2019).…”

Contracting out public participation to external consultants: Observations on epistemic justice

“…Previous research on correlates of attitudes of administrators of public institutions toward public participation has also found that such attitudes are strongly associated with administrators' perceptions regarding the input legitimacy of participatory processes, namely participants' turnout and their representativeness of wider communities (Migchelbrink & Van de Walle, 2020, 2021). While increasing the number of participants can certainly reflect positive elements of public participation, a rhetoric that presents it as a solution to marginalized citizens' exclusion from participative processes veils the fact that such exclusion can persist if the increase in attendance is not actively accompanied by ensuring that attendees include citizens from the lower ends of the social and epistemic hierarchy (Hafsa et al, 2021; McCollum, 2012). Another example thereof can be taken from CECs' alternative suggestion that a better indicator of inclusive public participation would be ensuring that citizens understand municipal plans and their implications.…”

Assessing the impact of pure market, government, and social organization interaction on the effectiveness of public service procurement

“…Government procurement of public services is a policy practice implemented to improve governance levels and foster the development of social organizations (Hafsa et al, 2022). According to Rodriguez‐Plesa et al (2022), sustainable public procurement (SPP) presents a viable approach for local governments to tackle these concerns.…”