Investigating the Barriers to Sustainable Procurement in the United Nations

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to investigate the barriers that constitute obstacles to implementing effective sustainable procurement practices in the United Nations system. The research approach of the paper is inspired by Grounded Theory. We targeted the largest procuring UN entities as well as sustainability leaders in the UN system and approached a procurement practitioner and procurement policymaker at each for 30–45 min semi-structured telephone interviews. Twenty interviews were carried out. Drawing on the resulting qualitative data, we develop a framework of barriers in eight different categories each containing a number of individual barriers. By tallying the number of interview subjects that mention each barrier, a preliminary ranking of the barriers’ relative importance can be attained. The discussion of the barrier framework leads us to propose a sequential model of sustainable procurement implementation in public sector organizations. The paper should be useful for public sector procurement officials who are in the process of introducing sustainability measures. For the UN organizations that are working on this, the paper offers empirically demonstrated focus areas where it can help sequence the measures and prioritize resource investments. The research addresses a gap in the sustainable procurement and supply chain management literature: that of the understudied public sector, broadly, and the United Nations, specifically. The analysis also employs a novel split between the procurement policymaker and practitioner levels, which suggests an innovative approach to addressing the identification of barriers in sustainable procurement.