New directions for research in green public procurement: The challenge of inter-stakeholder tensions

Abstract

Public sector spending represents a significant portion of gross domestic product in most countries, and holds much promise to advance calls to improve the sustainability of goods and services provided by supply chain partners – but only if multiple objectives can be reconciled. Public procurement also tends to heavily emphasize outcome-based specification practices that rely on traditional tendering for supplier selection, thereby stifling potentially innovative improvements. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we consider how potential inter-stakeholder tensions contribute to both the challenges and opportunities for green public procurement (GPP) practices. In addition to conventional categories of internal and external stakeholders, we identify a third category of stakeholders who ‘bridge’ across these two groups. This framing helps to delineate complex interactions among multiple stakeholder groups and enables a mapping of each group’s weighting of priorities and influence in decision making. Doing so highlights potential sources of inter-stakeholder tensions that must be balanced or resolved to advance GPP. Moreover, process-based collaboration can engage multiple groups of stakeholders, attenuate inter-stakeholder tensions, and foster cooperative, novel solutions for improved environmental outcomes. Drawing from an initial case study, new research directions emerge when we combine both process- and outcome-based practices that engage supply chain partners and multiple stakeholders to develop and advance new green technologies and evaluate complex considerations in public sector procurement.