Sustainable procurement practice

Abstract

Procurement has a key role in sustainability as policies and practices need to extend beyond organisations' boundaries incorporating their whole supply chains. Guidelines on sustainability encourage procurement to make decisions that encompass the environmental, economic and social elements of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL). Taking a supply chain perspective, procurement also need to analyse how decisions impact on the TBL in respect of suppliers. The results of a survey of sustainable procurement practices in 44 English-based UK Housing Associations (HAs), who are responsible for the provision of social housing, confi rms prior research of other sectors that suggests 1) a failure to overcome inertia in relation to sustainable procurement; and 2) in the few examples where practices have been established, only the environmental element of the TBL is considered. The organisations surveyed have sustainability-related issues in their missions and external and internal pressures to embed sustainability, yet this has not translated into widespread establishment of sustainable procurement. Recommendations to neutralise inertia are: fi rstly, take the experiences from other areas, e.g. innovation management, which stress the importance of inter-organisational relationships; secondly, develop a small number of sustainable development indicators for procurement and, to take advantage of the relatively more-advanced environmental practices to show how these elements have socio-economic impacts; and fi nally, rather than focus on just the pressures and drivers of sustainability (as suggested in strategic models of sustainability), emphasise the triggers that overcome inertia and lead to changes in behaviour amongst procurement staff i.e. the establishment of ethical pricing models.

Reporting on sustainable operations by third sector organizations: A signalling approach

“…Also, the fact that in reporting, emphasis is placed on environmental aspects rather than social factors is in line with other studies across different sectors (Meehan & Bryde, 2011;Pagell & Wu, 2009;Seuring & Müller, 2008).…”

“…Some examples include cases of nonprofit organizations buying fair trade products (Low & Davenport, 2009), or motivations to buy renewable electricity (Wiser, Fowlie, & Holt, 2001), or the use of sustainable timber in projects (Zuo, Potangaroa, Wilkinson, & Rotimi, 2009). More recently, Meehan and Bryde (2011) have concluded from a survey to Housing…”

Sustainable procurement portfolio management: a case study in a mining company

“…Despite the existence of important studies in this area (Bowen et al, 2001;Meehan & Bryde, 2011;Pagell et al, 2010), the subject of sustainable procurement is still in the early stages of understanding. More studies to establish how the principles connected to how the sustainable development may be combined to procurement strategies are needed (Meehan & Bryde, 2011).…”

“…More studies to establish how the principles connected to how the sustainable development may be combined to procurement strategies are needed (Meehan & Bryde, 2011).…”

Routines, Rigidity and Real Estate: Organisational Innovations in the Workplace

“…To date, it has only been referenced in environmental sustainability literature with regard to sustainable procurement policies [6]. To close this gap, this article collects detailed empirical evidence from the corporate real estate industry with the aim of shedding further light on the relationship between routine rigidity and environmentally focused organisational innovations.…”