Adjienim Boaterng Adjei Abstract To optimise sustainable procurement, key actors should therefore be encouraged to enact new behaviour. According to organisational change literature, change agents should play this encouraging role, as they can increase employees’ readiness for change by influencing their beliefs, inten-tions, and ultimately their behaviour. Recent sustainability studies highlight the importance of change agents as potential catalysts of sustainability initiatives. Moreover, a recent study indicates that actors in sustainable procurement projects might be acting as change agents. However, sustainable procurement literature has not studied the role of change agents in depth. This chapter closes this gap in the literature by showing that change agents are present in procurement projects and that their actions influence the degree of sustainable procurement. We do so by examining what role do change agents play in sustainable procurement projects in the Dutch national government? To answer this question, seven cases of sustain-able procurement projects in two Dutch national government organisations were compared, for which 35 key actors were interviewed. The Netherlands is a relevant case, as a motion in the Dutch House of Representatives led to the development of a sustainable procurement programme, and the political leaders subsequently agreed to implement this programme in all parts of the national government. Keywords: Role of Change Agents, Public Procurement Projects |