Procurement Research Research Articles

Transitioning young people into employment in the Australian construction industry: the trust-building role of project-based intermediaries

PurposeConstruction is one of Australia’s largest employers of young people and the industry is facing a major labor shortage, with young people expected to account for much of the shortfall. Surprisingly however, there been little research into the pathways for young people into construction employment. The aim of this paper is to address this gap in research by exploring whether project-based intermediaries can support the development of disadvantaged young people’s trust in the often-problematic systems which are meant to help transition them into employment in construction.Design/methodology/approachEmploying an in-depth case study approach, this research mobilizes theories of personalized and generalized trust to report the results of interviews with 15 sectoral leaders; focus groups with 12 young people working in construction; and interviews with 11 young people being transitioned into construction employment through a unique project-based intermediary developed by a major Australian construction company as part of its social procurement requirements.FindingsFindings show that project-based intermediaries can play an important trust-building role in transitioning disadvantaged young people into work in construction. They do this by bridging a young person’s strong social ties (family and friendship) and weak social ties (with government and construction industry organizations), both of which can be problematic when used in isolation to seek employment in construction. By performing a crucial bridging role between a young person’s individual self-interest in acting alone to find work and their collective interest in being part of a collaborative group, the project-based intermediary creates a new form of linking social capital, enabling social procurement policies which target young people to work while also addressing wider systemic problems in Australia’s employment systems.Originality/valueThis research addresses the lack of employment research into young people in construction and the paucity of theory in social procurement research more broadly. It takes an original approach in aligning theories related to a duality of personalized trust and generalized trust seen against the duality of individual intentionality and agency (self-focused) and shared intentionality and agency (group-focused). By doing so it provides new conceptual and practical insights into the important role that construction project-based intermediaries like the one studied here can play in providing innovative cross-sector and collaborative solutions to the world’s growing youth unemployment crisis.

Evaluating social procurement: a theoretically informed and methodologically robust social return on investment (SROI) analysis of a construction training initiative developed to reduce the risk of youth homelessness in Wales

Despite widespread claims about the benefits of social procurement, there is little robust evidence that emerging social procurement policies are achieving their intended outcomes. Addressing this gap in research, this paper presents a case study of a theoretically informed and methodologically robust evaluative social return on investment (SROI) analysis of a construction training initiative developed in Wales to reduce the risk of youth homelessness. Utilising Sen and Nussbaum's Capability Empowerment Approach, the results contribute to social procurement research by providing much needed empirical legitimacy to an under theorised field. Ensuring that new social procurement initiatives developed by the construction industry are theoretically and empirically sound is critical to ensure they are transparent, robust, testable, reliable and replicable in achieving the social outcomes they purport to deliver.

The scientometric analysis and visualization of sustainable procurement

Sustainable procurement has emerged as a crucial strategy to address environmental and social challenges while promoting responsible sourcing and procurement practices. This research presents a comprehensive scientometric analysis and visualization of 1044 publications from 1997 to July 2023 through a co-author, co-word, and co-citation analysis on sustainable procurement from the Scopus core collection database using VOSviewer and Gephi software. Prominent research areas include green procurement, sustainable procurement, sustainability, procurement, and supply chain. Leading institutions are the University of Southern Denmark, European Business School (EBS) University, Germany and the University of Louvain, Belgium, with the United Kingdom, United States, and China as citation leaders. The Top sustainable procurement outlets are the Journal of Cleaner Production, the International Journal of Production Economics, the Journal of Business Ethics, Sustainability, and Supply Chain Management. By providing a holistic overview of the sustainable procurement research landscape, this study contributes to evidence-based decision-making and fosters a collaborative approach towards achieving a more sustainable and socially responsible world essential for facilitating sustainability efforts. The findings serve as a foundation for future research and policy development, facilitating knowledge exchange and driving positive change in procurement practices.

Social Procurement in the Chinese Construction Industry: Relevance, Drivers and Barriers to Implementation

This paper addresses the current imbalance in construction social procurement research toward Western countries with neo-liberal models of public governance. It does this by exploring the potential value of construction social procurement in the Chinese centralized unitary state and socialist market system. Findings from a survey of one hundred and sixty-four professionals from the Chinese construction industry are reported. They highlight the institutional foundations into which social procurement could be implemented and the significant untapped social value that could be created. However, they also show that for social procurement to achieve its full potential in the Chinese construction industry, such policies need to be underpinned by meaningful industry consultation, effective education and clearly mandated targets that create a market for social value. This paper contributes to the global advancement of social procurement research in construction by providing new insights into the implementation of social procurement beyond the narrow confines of the Western political and governmental orthodoxies where such research has hitherto been focused.

Addressing Barriers to Social Procurement Implementation in the Construction and Transportation Industries: An Ecosystem Perspective

Although social procurement is viewed as an important part of social value creation, barriers to its implementation have resulted in a failure to realise the full societal benefits it was designed to achieve. As a key area of activity for government procurement projects, the construction and transportation industries have a big role to play in contributing positively to societal outcomes. While prior studies have identified barriers from specific cohorts, no prior study has approached this from the perspective of the key stakeholders throughout the social procurement ecosystem within the construction and transport industries. To address this gap in social procurement research, interviews and a focus group totalling 42 participants were undertaken. Participants ranged from those implementing policy (government representatives), tendering for contracts (tier one companies) and providing specialised social procurement services (social enterprises), along with key intermediary support bodies. Results indicate that barriers exist throughout the entire social procurement ecosystem and highlight the need to develop an enhanced social procurement ecosystem capable of maximising the societal benefit that arises from social procurement. These findings provide a set of strategies for the key stakeholders in the ecosystem to consider adopting to improve social procurement outcomes.

Addressing youth un/underemployment through construction social procurement: an ecological systems theory perspective

Young people’s unemployment and underemployment are acknowledged as serious and enduring problems in Australia and globally. Construction is one of the largest employers of young people, and social procurement of construction products and services has significant potential if harnessed to address this problem. This article argues that project-based intermediation offers critical new insights into how social procurement can be implemented in a construction context. Employing a single case study approach, the article uses ecological systems theory and concept mapping to examine the results of focus groups with twelve young people who transitioned to employment in the Australian construction industry through a unique project-based intermediary set up by a major contractor to meet its social procurement requirements. Addressing the current under-theorisation of social procurement research, this article offers new conceptual insights into the socio-ecological networks that influence young people’s successful transition to employment in construction. The findings also provide new practical insights for government policymakers and the construction industry into the potential role that project-based intermediation can play in addressing youth unemployment in the context of emerging social procurement policies in many countries.

КЛЮЧОВІ НАПРЯМКИ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ТА ДИЛЕМИ В СФЕРІ ПУБЛІЧНИХ ЗАКУПІВЕЛЬ: ТЕОРЕТИЧНИЙ ФРЕЙМ

The work summarizes scientific approaches to the phenomenon of public procurement from the positions of various schools and currents, analyzes the key dilemmas that arise in the process of functioning of the public procurement system of various countries of the world. It is well-founded that problems in the study of public procurement arise due to a number of factors: poor definition of the subject of public procurement, as its boundaries are “blurred” between many academic disciplines; the existence of a “gap” between academic works on the socio-economic consequences of public procurement and the framework sequence of their construction and execution procedure; insufficient interest in studying public procurement on the part of regional and local authorities. The analysis of public procurement research was carried out in several areas: 1) procurement selection methods; 2) attributes of goods and services; 3) participants’ experience; 4) decentralization of purchases; 5) accountability and transparency; 6) efficiency; 7) evaluation of procurement policy. The key dilemmas in the public procurement system are analyzed, among which the following are highlighted: 1) the accountability / responsibility dilemma: developing flexible procurement systems while maintaining accountability and control; 2) the fraud / red tape dilemma: limit the opportunity for fraud / mismanagement while reducing operational constraints; 3) the principle / agent dilemma: identifying “best value” in the presence of competing goals and common agency; 4) short-term / long-term cost dilemma: short-term economic efficiency vs. long-term monitoring costs; 5) the cost of empowerment dilemma: responsiveness to “end user” through decentralization while increasing training and evaluation costs. In the long term, reforms aimed at improving procedures and increasing the adaptive potential of the public procurement system are critically important

The landscape of public procurement research: a bibliometric analysis and topic modelling based on Scopus

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the structure and dynamics of academic articles relating to public procurement (PP) in the period 1984–2022 (up to May). The researchers also intend to analyse how this knowledge domain has grown since 1984. Design/methodology/approach A bibliometric analysis was carried out to examine the existing state of PP research. Based on 640 journal articles indexed in the Scopus database and written by 1,247 authors over nearly four decades, a bibliometric analysis was conducted to reveal the intellectual structure of academic works pertaining to PP. Findings Findings reveal that PP research from Scopus has significantly increased in the past decade. Major journals publishing PP research are International Journal of Procurement Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and Public Money and Management. Results also indicate that authors’ cooperation network is fragmented, showing limited collaboration among PP researchers. In addition, results suggest that the institutional collaboration network in PP research mirrors what is commonly referred to as the North–South divide, signifying insufficient research collaboration between developed and developing countries’ institutions. According to the co-occurrence keyword network and topic modelling, PP revolves around five main themes, including innovation, corruption, sustainable and green PP, PP contracts and small and medium enterprises. Based on these results, several directions for future research are suggested. Social implications This paper provides an increased understanding of the entire PP field and the potential research directions. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first-ever application of bibliometric techniques and topic modelling to examine the development of PP research since 1984 based on scholarly publications extracted from the Scopus database.

Research on truckload transportation procurement: A review, framework, and future research agenda

AbstractThe body of literature on truckload (TL) transportation procurement decisions by firms (shippers) and their transportation service providers (motor carriers) has been driven by real‐world challenges faced by a large and important segment of the economy. The field has received the attention of researchers from a wide range of domains. While this attention demonstrates the appeal of these complex procurement problems, it also underscores a key challenge: the literature is dispersed and uncoordinated. This makes it difficult to identify meaningful new streams of research, risks slowing progress in the field, and limits the exposure of the research to wider supply chain audiences. With this review of the existing literature, we coordinate the growing set of research in this domain and demonstrate how the TL procurement literature is positioned within the broader streams of service procurement research. We develop a framework that describes the types (make vs. buy) and timing (strategic or execution stage) of decisions about the procurement of TL transportation services, organized by which actor's perspective is taken—the shipper's or the carrier's. We suggest areas of future research informed by an existing set of industry‐led research and the gaps we have identified in the academic literature.

Mapping the field of sustainable procurement: a bibliometric analysis

PurposeThe study aims to analyze the intellectual structure in sustainable procurement (SP) research to identify the knowledge research clusters and provide potential avenues for future research.Design/methodology/approachThe study conducted a bibliometric analysis to analyze the intellectual structure in the area of SP. Overall, 1,294 articles were selected from the Scopus database published between 2000 and 2022. The analysis was conducted using bibliometric R package, Biblioshiny and VOSviewer software. Further, content analysis of research clusters was carried out to set the future research agenda.FindingsThe study identifies four major knowledge research clusters of SP, namely, (1) green supply chain practices, (2) socially responsible purchasing, (3) environmental purchasing and (4) public procurement and policy. The study suggests a few research directions in the SP field. Moreover, the future research directions are aligned with specific organizational theories applicable in the area of SP research.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is dependent on the Scopus database for the source of research publications on SP. Future studies may consider other research database sources.Practical implicationsIdentifying knowledge research clusters of SP research is of paramount importance for developing policies in the near future. These policy initiatives pave the way for the adoption of SP practices in the business. The findings indicate the issues managers encounter while implementing SP in organizations.Originality/valueThe study offers valuable insights concerning parameters such as significant publication outlets, influential countries concerning the number of publications, impactful authors, title keywords and identifying major knowledge research clusters of SP to suggest future research directions. Further, the present study highlights emerging areas that require further research, including process governance, supplier diversity, innovation, the role of emerging technologies and the application of organizational theories in SP.

Sustainable procurement in Ghana: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

The focus of the study was to set an agenda for sustainable procurement (SP) research. Adopting a systematic literature review approach, data was collected from articles published in internet-based journals. Without restricting evidence to a particular sector, 25 articles were collected from a period spanning 2007 to 2020, analysed descriptively, and presented results in descriptive and thematic form. The findings indicated SP research in Ghana has been silent until 2013. Studies are concentrated in the mining and construction industries. The practice of SP was reported to be low with differing practices from sector to sector but with prospects and opportunities for promotion. Twenty factors and challenges were identified. The recent surge in the research revealed by the results calls for studies into several issues like comparing the effects of decentralised and centralised purchasing agreements on SP adoption using different approaches, levels of analysis, contexts, conceptual and methodological approaches.

Circular procurement: A systematic literature review

In recent years, there has been a phenomenal growth in procurement research towards a circular economy (CE). However, to date, there is a lack of systematic synthesis of this body of knowledge hindering theoretical development. This work aims to investigate the current state of circular procurement (CP) in both the public and private sectors through a systematic literature review . To this end, this paper reviews the relevant studies published between 1998 and 2021 and identifies three themes: antecedents, practices, and performance (outcomes). New subcategories for the themes are also presented. Based on the structured analysis, we propose a conceptual theoretical model of CP and future research directions.

How are social procurement actors shaping a new field of professional practice in the Australian construction industry?

PurposeSocial procurement is becoming an increasing policy focus for governments around the world as they seek to incentivise new collaborative partnerships with private organisations in industries like construction to meet their social obligations. The limited construction management research in this area shows that the successful implementation of these policies depends on a new generation of social procurement professionals who are promoting these policies into an institutional vacuum with little organisational identity, legitimacy and support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what these actors do to promote and build support for the implementation of these policies in their organisations.Design/methodology/approachA thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 social procurement actors in the Australian construction industry is presented.FindingsResults portray an experimental, disconnected and nascent institutional field of practice with a high degree of role ambiguity and conflict. In the absence of a clear organisational identity and legitimate power-base, social procurement actors are forced to rely on incremental rather than radical innovation and the power of stories to persuade others to engage with their vision for creating social value through construction.Originality/valueContributing new insights to the emerging “practice theme” in social procurement research, this paper provides important conceptual and practical information about the attributes which determine their success, how they fit into existing organisational structures and how they build support to achieve enabling institutional change. Academically, the results advance understanding of how social procurement professionals are implementing these policies into their organisations. Practically, they provide new information which enable social procurement professionals to improve their practices and construction companies to recruit the right people into these roles and design their organisations to more effectively support them.

Spillover of COVID-19: Impact on National Defense

The rapidly spreading impact of Covid-19 has potentially dire consequences for the Ministry of Defense's ability to protect national interests. The unprecedented effects of this pandemic are directly undermining the ability of the Ministry of Defense to carry out the National Defense Strategy. In particular, Covid-19 has harmed the readiness of the Armed Forces, their ability to project power globally, and their speed of modernization for future challenges. This paper uses a descriptive qualitative approach as the main writing approach and uses the concept of impacts across key organizational pillars by Beth McGrath (2020), including (1) Workforce planning, (2) Training methods, (3) Reprioritizing spending, and (4) Policy. The results of this study are: (1) The Ministry of Defense must be prepared with a complete set of strategies, (2) Distributed Virtual Reality training is a natural solution to the challenges posed by the current pandemic, (3) The military has no other choice but to make it a priority in spending on defense equipment and in carrying out military operations. The obvious choice is the big budget items that cause problems, and (4) The defense equipment procurement program, military operations, and Research & Development (R&D) activities are expected to be hampered. As governments seek to prevent and mitigate the impact of this pandemic, the positive role played by military forces can be seen as an excuse to offset some of the expected defense budget cuts.

The Nexus between Gender Diversity and Research Performance: The Case of Public Procurement

ABSTRACT Although the nexus between performance and gender diversity has been widely researched in different contexts, we know little about the role gender diversity in co-authoring procurement research plays on research productivity. Using diversity performance literature as a theoretical backdrop and drawing on data from articles published in three procurement journals, the study runs negative binomial regressions. This study has implications for academic institutions and research team’s performance with the results demonstrating that gender diversity has trivial impact on research performance and that the publication outlet is a significant predictor of research performance.

Cleantech: State of the Art and Implications for Public Procurement

This paper explores opportunities for utilising cleantech in framing research on sustainability-oriented innovations in public procurement. Research objectives include a critical examination of whether cleantech is a distinct sector through a systematic literature review and synthesis of findings with public procurement research. The final analysis involved 31 peer reviewed academic papers along with additional publications obtained with the snowball-approach. The results suggest that cleantech could be used to analyse sustainability related research in the public procurement context. Cleantech is also helpful in enhancing research on public procurement of innovations and addressing societal benefits through local development. Findings unveil new opportunities in investigating better access of SMEs to public contracts through intermediaries, networks, and public-private partnerships. This paper is the first academic paper to analyse academic cleantech literature and link cleantech and public procurement fields. Such an approach is helpful in framing sustainability in public procurement research and stresses new ways of involving SMEs in public contracts.

Bringing Social Procurement into Public Management Research

As the largest buyers in the economy, government have enormous purchasing power. Public procurement, therefore, can be leveraged for social outcomes, such as helping marginalized communities, and reducing negative environmental impacts. However, as yet, there is little understanding about the extent of social procurement research, how it has evolved, and how public management scholarship has assessed it. We provide a framework for organizing research around social public procurement. We conduct a systematic review of research on social public procurement to understand the state of knowledge and identify critical gaps and research opportunities for public managers and public management scholars.

The institutional drivers of social procurement implementation in Australian construction projects

Social procurement policies are becoming an increasingly popular tool for construction project clients to meet their corporate social responsibility objectives. This research employs New Institutional Theory to investigate the coercive, mimetic and normative drivers behind the adoption of social procurement policies in Australian construction projects. It presents a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with sixteen social procurement actors in the Australian construction industry who are responsible for implementing these policies at a project level. Results contribute new theoretical and practical insights into the nascent and under-theorized body of social procurement research in the field of project management. They indicate that coercive isomorphism is the most powerful driver of social procurement adoption in Australian construction projects, followed by mimetic isomorphism and normative isomorphism. It is concluded that the effective implementation of social procurement policies in construction projects requires project supply chains to shift from a compliance and mimicking mindset to one which normalizes social procurement. This will require institutional change based on the legitimisation of new social procurement professionals, roles and practices and the development of new project-based intermediaries to mitigate the risks and maximize the opportunities that social procurement presents.

Recent research on public procurement: Should it become a subfield of public administration?

AbstractThis article presents a descriptive review of public procurement research conducted between 2010 and 2018 based on the coding of a sample of 743 relevant articles. We use the results to build a case for making public procurement a subfield of public administration research. We first present a systematic framework for studying public procurement that lays the ground for the coding strategy. Second, we outline the scope and method of the research, and then describe our findings regarding the most important topics, journals and authors in the recent literature on public procurement. Finally, we suggest how to improve the visibility and relevance of public procurement research in public administration journals.

When Green Procurement Meets Complexity: The Case of Sustainable Neighborhood Projects

In a rapidly urbanizing world, cities form the key context for a sustainable transition. The neighborhood scale is suggested as a successful scale to realize cross-sector, inter-organizational collaborations. The multifaceted goals and resulting interdependencies in sustainable neighborhood (SN) developments seem to render them complex. Neighborhood scale can be understood as a program of related projects encompassing a wide range of actors interacting in a non-simple way. The added complexity comprised at the neighborhood scale challenges the promise of sustainable transition, creating a gap between what is promised as SN and what is delivered. While filling this gap is deemed pivotal to boost the performance and success of SNs, this study focuses on the practice of procurement. Green procurement has a prominent role in fostering the sustainable transition and alleviate the projects’ poor performance in energy consumption and carbon emissions. However, green procurement is complicated and often hampered by the complex nature of the programs and projects required to realize SNs. Using an in-depth case study of an ongoing SN development in Norway, we seek to explore green procurement in SN programs. The present study has several contributions. First, we provide a fresh look at SNs using the notion of program management and the principles of nearly decomposable systems. Second, the study demonstrates that green procurement can support coordination in programs, and propose several implications for purchasers to consider when devising a green procurement strategy for SN programs, laying the groundwork for new procurement research focusing on structural complexity. Furthermore, our study encourages purchasers to think like architects to grasp the various levels and make better decisions in complex projects and programs.