Sustainable Procurement in Practice

Adjienim Boaterng Adjei

Abstract

Based on a review of sustainable procurement literature, the factors commitment, expertise, and top management support were identified as potentially influencing the degree of sustainable procurement. Whereas commitment and top management support are considered important factors of successful change in both sustainable procurement and organisational change literature, expertise as an influencing factor is derived from the sustainable procurement literature only. The commitment of project teams engaged in procurement to embrace policy objectives or strategies is considered essential to generating the effort and energy necessary for a successful project, and it determines where an organisation places itself on the continuum of innovator to laggard showed top management support to be a significant factor in the implementation of sustainable procurement. If managers support sustainable procurement and incorporate it into their planning, strategies or goal setting, the project teams will execute it. In their literature review, Fernandez and Rainey (2006) state that there is consider-able evidence that top management support and commitment play an essential role in successful change in the public sector. Expertise is an organisational factor that is not (yet) considered important in organisational change theory. However, several stud-ies on sustainable procurement have shown that without relevant expertise public procurers interpret the new situation based on their old routines, which are no longer appropriate to the situation, making traditional choices and diminishing the degree of sustainable procurement.

Keywords:  Sustainable procurement in practice

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