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Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 32978

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Leire San-Jose

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Bilbao, Spain & University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Interests: ethics in finance, stakeholder theory, social value, social sustainability, social efficiency

Prof. Dr. Jose Luis Retolaza

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Deusto Business School, Bilbao, Spain
Interests: stakeholder theory, social value, social accounting, social sustainability, social efficiency

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The volume of public purchase and public procurement is very high in Europe; public authorities in the EU spend at least 14% of GDP on the purchase of services, works, and supplies, and €2 trillion yearly. Thus, public purchase studies should include the sustainability perspective, because the mere reduction to cost-based decisions does not encourage social and environmental sustainability. For this reason, the last directive of the European Union, and initiatives of various countries, such as the Social Value Act of Great Britain, encourage the inclusion of social and environmental performance sustainability; however, it is an issue that still has not been addressed in depth from the field of research, either at a theoretical level or at a practical level.

This Special Issue aims to discuss the strategies and models to analyze positive and negative externalities, social or environmental, with free competition, and also to encourage researchers to contribute to social and environmental efficiency in this respect, and to determine a transparent and objective measurement system of externalities, and the development of a joint analysis of the triple bottom line. We invite you to contribute to this Issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, case studies, or research articles. Papers selected for this Special Issue are subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of a rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

References:

Fernández-Guadaño, J., & Sarria-Pedroza, J. (2018). Impact of corporate social responsibility on value creation from a stakeholder perspective. Sustainability, 10(6), 2062.

Retolaza, J. L., San-Jose, L., & Ruíz-Roqueñi, M. (2016). Social accounting for sustainability: Monetizing the social value. Cham: Springer.

Retolaza, J. L., San-Jose, L., Ruiz-Roqueñi, M., Araujo, A., Agüado, R., Urionabarrenetxea, S., Garcia-Merino, J.D. & Alcañiz, L. A. (2015). Incorporando el valor social en las licitaciones públicas: un modelo integral. CIRIEC-España, revista de economía pública, social y cooperativa, (85), 55-82.

San-Jose, L., Retolaza, J., & Lamarque, E. (2018). The Social Efficiency for Sustainability: European Cooperative Banking Analysis. Sustainability, 10(9), 3271.

Public Procurement. Available online: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/public-procurement_en

Prof. Dr. Leire San-Jose
Prof. Dr. Jose Luis Retolaza
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

public purchase
social impact
government
social value
social clauses
sustainability

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

33 pages, 8572 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Intellectual Structure of Social and Sustainable Public Procurement Research: A Co-Citation Analysis

by Jose Torres-Pruñonosa, Miquel Angel Plaza-Navas, Francisco Díez-Martín and Albert Beltran-Cangrós

Sustainability 2021, 13(2), 774; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020774 - 14 Jan 2021

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 4009

Abstract

Public procurement has recently taken into account social and sustainable factors, increasing academic literature in this field. The aim of this paper is to map the intellectual structure of social and sustainable public procurement research by means of delimiting the scientific domain’s research traditions, its disciplinary composition, and influential research topics. Given that there is a literature gap in bibliometric studies applied to this field, we conducted a co-citation analysis to identify the intellectual structure of this area of knowledge. Co-citation analyses identify networks of interconnections and, consequently, detect the most (and the least) active research areas, being a good complement to traditional literature reviews. This article contributes to science development because it is the first paper to carry out a bibliometric analysis in the field of social and sustainable public procurement, as well as the first one to conduct a co-citation analysis among public procurement research. Consequently, it is also the first article to detect which papers have become burst in this research field. The results show twelve different clusters of publications that were cited by researchers who wrote papers on social and sustainable public procurement. In other words, the sources of knowledge that scholars used as references are analysed, identifying papers that can be considered turning points, as well as those that became specially cited over a discrete period of time. Six different research trends were identified over the last decade in regard to social and sustainable public procurement research. The conclusions highlight the relevance of the findings, especially because they provide guidance to researchers when conducting literature reviews, given that the most significant journals and papers are identified. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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19 pages, 872 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Beyond Policies and Social Washing: How Social Procurement Unfolds in Practice

by Daniella Troje and Pernilla Gluch

Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 4956; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12124956 - 18 Jun 2020

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3932

Abstract

Social procurement is increasingly used by organizations to create social value. An important feature of social procurement used to mitigate issues with social exclusion is employment requirements, which aim to create internships for unemployed marginalized people. However, little is known of their effects on people working at an operative level. Through 23 semi-structured interviews with practitioners in the Swedish construction and real estate sector, this paper adopts a practice lens to analyse the effects of employment requirements (ER). Findings show that practitioners must handle the tension between old and new practices, and strike a balance between fulfilling formal responsibilities and performing new practices on an ad hoc basis, and finding the time and resources to do so. Practitioners act as practice carriers for both traditional work tasks and new employment requirement practices, which can lead to role ambiguity. The paper provides novel details for how employment requirements unfold in practice. It also adds to practice theory by suggesting an important relational aspect between first-order, premeditated practices, and second-order, emergent practices, and how both types of practices are vital for working with employment requirements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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16 pages, 295 KiB

Open AccessArticle

SROI Methodology for Public Administration Decisions about Financing with Social Criteria. A Case Study

by Mercedes Ruiz-Lozano, Pilar Tirado-Valencia, Antonio Sianes, Antonio Ariza-Montes, Vicente Fernández-Rodríguez and Mª Carmen López-Martín

Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 1070; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031070 - 3 Feb 2020

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4108

Abstract

The measurement of impacts has been considered one of the best methodologies to evaluate the level of achievement of social entities’ objectives as well as of their contribution to resolving social problems. Those methodologies can guide public policies and subsidies granting, as they help to identify the organizations producing a higher social value, and the effects of their projects. Our research focused on the effectiveness and the efficiency of social entities, measured through their capacity to generate impacts on their stakeholders. The research was realized through the analysis of a case study: the special education center for disabled youths, CEE-SA, in Spain. The social return on investment (SROI) methodology has allowed us to monetarize the social value created for stakeholders through the activity carried out by CEE-SA, and it provides information about the whole value creation process that is generated, for which the analysis and follow-up through the indicators offers a contribution to its management system. This case study can serve as a reference in assessing the management processes of similar entities and can also highlight SROI usefulness for public administrations as an assessment tool for subsidies granted on social criteria. The originality of this research relies on the new SROI methodology provided for the assessment of public financing decisions, especially in a field that remains as under-researched as special education schools. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

12 pages, 530 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Social Accounting for Sustainability: A Study in the Social Economy

by Larraitz Lazkano and Ana Beraza

Sustainability 2019, 11(24), 6894; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11246894 - 4 Dec 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3650

Abstract

In order to understand an organization’s survival and growth, legitimacy plays a key role. This paper explains how social accounting can generate legitimacy for a social company and make companies more sustainable. The demand to know the value that different organizations generate or detract from society has increased since the global crisis of 2008. Sustainable organizations are those that positively impact all stakeholder groups. In this paper, an analysis of 20 Spanish social companies that have implemented or are going to implement social accounting is made. We analyzed, through interviews, the expectations and integration of social accounting, determining change-emerging factors occurring after the application of social accounting. For the qualitative analysis of the information collected, NVivo 12 was used, a software program adequate for qualitative and mixed-methods research. The main finding shows that most companies communicate results internally; thus, these companies expect a higher involvement in the implementation of social accounting. Social companies, since their value is fundamentally not centered on that which comes from commercial activity, need to evidence their effort on specific social values that do not go through the market, and so are not reflected in traditional financial statements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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23 pages, 1570 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Public Procurement: From Law to Practice

by Javier Mendoza Jiménez, Montserrat Hernández López and Susana Eva Franco Escobar

Sustainability 2019, 11(22), 6388; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226388 - 14 Nov 2019

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4752

Abstract

This study aims to propose actions to improve the implementation of sustainable public procurement by identifying the problems perceived by public servants and social economy entities. Two types of questionnaires were sent to organizations in Spain and Europe and 217 complete answers were received (152 from the public sector and 65 from the social entities). In addition, 20 semi-structured personal interviews were conducted by phone with managers of social enterprises and four interviews, also by phone, were carried out with relevant people from the public sector. The results of the surveys and the interviews were structured using the analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT), which was considered consistent with the strategic nature of public procurement. The perceived opportunities for the public sector focus on more efficient use of public resources and improvement of reputation and social equality. For the social entities, more participation in procurement could lead to less dependency on public funds and more visibility. The obstacles for the public sector are related to lack of training and internal resistance to change, as well as, in the case of social entities, to their small size and the tensions with their social object that might derive from bigger competition. The proposed activities focus on two objectives, more training to increase knowledge from the public sector and the readiness of social entities. It is concluded that it is necessary to establish channels of communications between the two groups to avoid possible inefficiencies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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15 pages, 781 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Relevance of Social, Economic, and Environmental Impacts on Residents’ Satisfaction with the Public Administration of Tourism

by María-Elena Sánchez del Río-Vázquez, Carlos J. Rodríguez-Rad and María-Ángeles Revilla-Camacho

Sustainability 2019, 11(22), 6380; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226380 - 13 Nov 2019

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 6293

Abstract

Those in charge of tourism destinations face the need to create tourism development models compatible with the essence of the localities that they manage. These models have to be sustainable, both environmentally and socially, and also must become drivers of the local economy. However, tourists also generate negative impacts in the locality which, when they are perceived by the residents, can give rise to a rejection of visitors. Hence, improving the tourism management is necessary. This is why to know the residents’ perceptions about the impacts of tourism is essential. Moreover, measuring the impact effects on their satisfaction with the public administration of the destination can be of great usefulness. This study falls into this research line, as it proposes a model to measure these impacts and their effect on satisfaction. To do so, an empirical study is performed among residents in the city of Seville (southern Spain, one of the most visited destinations in the world), based on subjective economic, social, and environmental indicators. The results show that the citizens value three types of impacts, the social impact coming after the economic impact as to its influence on their satisfaction with the administration. Based on this, we postulate that the efforts made to attract events to the city, or to improve connections to access a broader market, must be approached as public procurements in which selection criteria that are compatible with the destination’s positioning and strategy prevail. Social and environmental criteria should be considered among these criteria. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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15 pages, 1342 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improvement Actions for a More Social and Sustainable Public Procurement: A Delphi Analysis

by Ramon Bernal, Leire San-Jose and Jose Luis Retolaza

Sustainability 2019, 11(15), 4069; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11154069 - 27 Jul 2019

Cited by 42 | Viewed by 5461

Abstract

Public procurement accounts for almost 20% of Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP). The current legislation allows for the inclusion of social considerations in contracting processes, hence the interest of this study, which defines the procedures and improvement actions for socially efficient public procurement. The Delphi technique has been used, based on online surveys completed by 71 Spanish experts. The universe includes the set of nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTs), as well as a number of agents with the potential to intervene in the analysis process, namely, academia, the business sector, and public administrations. There is an increasing call for the inclusion of social considerations in tender procedures. However, to date, few studies have provided detailed insight into the inclusion of these social aspects. This study contributes to the scientific literature by identifying six possible strategies for including social considerations into public tenders, namely: objectivizing procedures, generating monitoring tools, developing information and training actions for decision-makers, incorporating awareness-raising initiatives, creating transparency systems, and including information and communication technologies (ICTs). The following four key action areas were also detected: social clauses, reserved markets, social impact assessment, and innovation in public procurement. A consensus was reached on four frames for incorporating the strategies and action areas, namely: socio-economic, procedural, competence, and conceptual. This allows for the efficient inclusion of social considerations into public tenders, thereby generating a twofold impact—one via the goods or services acquired, and the second via the impact on the process of producing said goods or services. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Encouraging Social and Environmental Sustainability through Public Procurement)

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