رابطه بین تدارکات پایدار و تدارکات الکترونیکی در بخش دولتی

This study examines the relationship between sustainable procurement and e-procurement, two recent initiatives in public procurement in many countries. A survey of sustainable procurement and e-procurement adoption was conducted with a sample of over 280 public procurement practitioners from 20 countries and with collective responsibility for expenditure totalling $45 BN. Using multiple regression, we develop a model to show that e-procurement and communication with suppliers supports some types of sustainable procurement, and hinders others. E-procurement and communication with suppliers may help environmental, labour, health and safety aspects of sustainable procurement. Conversely, e-procurement may hinder buying from small local firms that are not e-enabled.

There is increasing concern with sustainable development and the impact of businesses on society and the environment. This is apparent from trends in the media, business practices and academic literature. In an analysis of top US newspapers and network evening newscasts, it was found that media coverage on climate change has increased seven-fold since the 1980s, peaking with political discussions of the role of governments and businesses in sustainability such as the Rio Summit and the Kyoto protocol (Boykoff and Boykoff, 2007). This increased interest in sustainability is reflected by the emergence in 1999 of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (2008), and in 2001 of the FTSE4Good Index Series (FTSE, 2008), which indicate that investors and companies are keen to demonstrate sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and reduce impacts on the environment. This focus on sustainability is echoed in the academic management literature, with the number of articles on sustainability increasing year on year (Linton et al., 2007 and Srivastava, 2007). Several journals have devoted special issues to sustainability and CSR in the supply chain. Special issues have appeared in the following: • Journal of Operations Management entitled ‘Supply chain management in a sustainable environment’ (Jayaraman et al., 2007), • Supply Chain Management: an International Journal entitled ‘Corporate Social Responsibility in the Supply Chain’ (Lindgreen et al., 2008), • Journal of Supply Chain Management entitled ‘Sustainable supply chain management’ (Krause et al., 2009), • Industrial Marketing Management has a call for papers (2011) entitled ‘Green marketing and its impact on supply chain management in industrial markets’, • International Journal of Production Economics has two calls for papers (2011) entitled ‘Models for Compassionate Operations’ and ‘Sustainable Development of Manufacturing and Services’, • International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management has a call for papers (2011) entitled ‘Logistics and supply chain solutions for a changing competitive landscape: impacts of sustainability and resource scarcity’. These special issues and calls for papers suggest there is a lot of research interest in sustainable SCM, with the overwhelming majority of studies focusing on environmental issues in private sector manufacturing supply chain contexts (Frota Neto et al., 2008, Piplani et al., 2008, Srivastava, 2007, Vachon and Klassen, 2008b and Zhu et al., 2008). Relatively few articles have investigated sustainable supply chain issues in a public sector context (Mitra and Webster, 2008), which presents an interesting setting due to the magnitude of public sector purchasing power, providing the potential to make substantial contributions to the sustainable development agenda. Our research addresses this gap by conducting an international study of sustainable supply chain issues in the public sector. In the public sector, the pursuit of sustainability objectives in the purchasing and supply process has been termed sustainable procurement (SP). We define sustainable procurement as the pursuit of sustainable development objectives through the purchasing and supply process, incorporating social, environmental and economic aspects. Sustainable procurement policy and national plans have been developed in many countries including the UK (DEFRA, 2007), countries in the EU ( Bouwer et al., 2006 and Steurer et al., 2007) and the US (McCrudden, 2004). Academic interest in public sector expenditure attributable to purchases of goods and services (Brulhart and Trionfetti, 2004, Fernandez-Martin, 1996, McCrudden, 2004 and Trionfetti, 2000) arises in part from the absolute scale of public procurement with between 8% and 25% of the GDP of OECD countries and 16% of EU GDP being attributable to government purchases of goods or services (Afonso et al., 2005, European Commission, 2006 and OECD, 2000). The role of government purchases as a stimulus for sustainable development has been a topic of particular interest in recent years (McCrudden, 2004, Walker and Brammer, 2009 and Weiss and Thurbon, 2006). As the public sector is concerned with societal well being, it may have a propensity for pursuing sustainability issues compared to the private sector. The government can lead the way in stimulating sustainable supply chain management in markets, by demanding environmentally and socially responsible products and services of suppliers, who in turn are likely to offer them to other customers in the market. Although sustainable procurement has an increasingly high profile in policy circles around the world, very little is known about the extent to which sustainable procurement policies and practices are embedded within the practice of public procurement professionals globally. This study focuses particularly on the relationships between sustainable procurement, supplier communication and e-procurement. Previous studies have identified that communicating and collaborating with suppliers can aid environmental supply chain management, although such studies have tended to be conducted in manufacturing contexts (Sharfman et al., 2007, Vachon and Klassen, 2006, Vachon and Klassen, 2008a and Verghese and Lewis, 2007). Governments actively promote e-business campaigns to get firms ‘connected’ (Currie, 2004). E-procurement has rarely been investigated in a public sector context (Panayiotou et al., 2004 and Schoenherr and Rao Tummala, 2007), and in the public domain can be seen as the use of ICT to support the delivery of public procurement policy, improving transparency and efficiency (Carayannis and Popescu, 2005). E-procurement offers a range of new opportunities to make sustainable purchasing operational for public sector organisations (Abukhader and Jonson, 2004 and Legarth, 2001). This study makes several contributions. First, the relationships between the adoption of e-procurement practices, communication with suppliers and sustainable procurement have barely been explored. Two procurement objectives are at play, these being sustainable procurement to minimise environmental impacts and increase social impacts, and e-procurement adoption to achieve greater efficiency and transparency in procurement. We shed light on the relationship and likely congruence between these two important procurement objectives, with a view to informing procurement policy and practice. Specifically, we seek to identify whether e-procurement helps to operationalise sustainable procurement. Second, the extant literature on sustainable supply chain management and on e-business has focused mainly on private manufacturing sector contexts (Srivastava, 2007), whereas this study focuses on the public sector. Management research has often been motivated by a desire to provide firms with an economic benefit, and similar research could be directed at non-profit, governmental and international agencies with social measures (Prasad and Babbar, 2000). The public sector is concerned with achieving value for money in the way it procures goods and services, but has other policy objectives as well. What may be good practice in a profit-making firm may not be so clearly applicable for not-for-profit and public sector organisations. The interaction between sustainable supply chain management and government policy has previously been highlighted (Linton et al., 2007): “Changes in policy … force both manufacturers and researchers to explore options to improve the sustainability of operations across the supply chain. However, change can also flow in the opposite direction. Research and practice in supply chain management can affect policy … by presenting alternative scenarios for the development of sustainable supply chains”. This research explores how sustainable procurement interacts with e-procurement adoption, responding to calls to investigate practice in sustainable supply chain management in different countries (Angell and Klassen, 1999 and Zhu and Sarkis, 2004). This paper is structured as follows. A literature review follows, that culminates in hypothesis development. Next, the methods are described, including sampling, dependent, independent and control variables. The results of the analysis are then presented, followed by a discussion and conclusions. The implications of the study for policymakers, practitioners and future research are considered.

This study aimed to explore the extent to which sustainable procurement policy is being put into practice and whether different aspects of sustainable procurement are affected by the use of e-procurement and communication with suppliers. An international survey of public procurement professionals found that sustainable procurement policies are being put into practice within public sector organisations internationally, but that policy and practice varies across countries. The findings are discussed below, along with the implications for policy and practice. The research explored whether public sector organisations that have greater use of e-procurement and communicate more with suppliers also have greater engagement in different aspects of sustainable procurement practices (environment, labour practices, health and safety, community and philanthropic activities, buying from minority owned SMEs, buying from SMEs and local SMEs). Communication with suppliers and e-procurement do not appear to be significantly related to community and diversity variables (community and philanthropic activities, and buying from minority owned SMEs) (shown in brackets in Fig. 1). The links between these social aspects of sustainable procurement and e-procurement seem less well developed than the environmental aspects, which reflects the substantially greater focus on green procurement practices generally across countries. Communication is positively related to environmental supply practices and labour, health and safety. Those public sector organisations that communicate more with suppliers may have greater impacts on these aspects of sustainable procurement. This finding aligns with studies suggesting that communication and collaboration in supply chains aids environmental supply chain management (Theyel, 2001 and Vachon and Klassen, 2006). Communication is positively related to buying from SMEs and local suppliers. This suggests that e-procurement might need to be supported by traditional communications to keep the SMEs engaged. This may suggest that communication activities such as ‘Meet the Buyer’ events held by public sector organisations may facilitate engagement with small and local suppliers. As communication is positively related to aspects of sustainable procurement, there is scope for future research to extend the current investigation to explore how different forms of e-business other than e-procurement may support information and knowledge exchange in sustainable supply chains. In addition e-procurement is positively related to environmental supply practices and labour, health and safety. This affirms previous findings that link elements of e-commerce with environmental purchasing (Bendoly and Schoenherr, 2005 and Legarth, 2001). It may be that e-procurement facilitates some aspects of environmental purchasing, such as having green products available in e-catalogues. E-procurement may also increase efficiency and reduce waste in the purchasing and supply process, making procurement ‘lean and green’ (Kainuma and Tawara, 2006). However, we found a strong negative relationship between e-procurement practices and buying from small and local businesses. SMEs typically lack the capabilities to adopt e-procurement or other types of IT, so greater use of IT in public procurement is likely to leave some SMEs out if they cannot adapt. Previous studies have suggested that small businesses are not ready for e-procurement, and are hindered in supplying the public sector compared to larger suppliers (Kartiwi and MacGregor, 2007 and Quayle, 2005). E-procurement may reflect the strategic interests of powerful players and may be shaped by the competitive environment (Webster, 1995). Our study seems to suggest that e-procurement acts as an impediment to an important aspect of sustainable procurement, namely buying from SMEs. In some cases such as Taiwan, government programmes have been implemented to link up small suppliers electronically. This kind of support might be necessary to keep SMEs involved while pursuing sustainability goals. It has been suggested that public procurement can make significant inroads on the sustainable procurement agenda by buying from SMEs (Walker and Brammer, 2009 and Walker and Preuss, 2008). Also, it seems that sustainable procurement practices in the UK seem to be skewed towards buying from small and local suppliers (Walker and Brammer, 2009 and Weiss and Thurbon, 2006). It appears that e-procurement policy and sustainable procurement policy are conflicting policy objectives in some country policy contexts. It seems apparent that e-procurement will not help a public sector organisation with all types of sustainable procurement equally. It will depend on the type of purchase and the type of sustainable procurement benefit pursued. There will be trade-offs between different aspects of sustainable procurement, for example, local suppliers may not be the best suppliers for reductions in waste and packaging. It would be interesting for future research to investigate such trade-offs, and to gain understanding of how e-procurement can most effectively operationalise specific aspects of sustainable procurement. The study had several limitations. Respondents are self-selecting and likely to skew the sample to those practitioners having an interest in sustainable procurement. In addition, survey items were drawn from surveys of manufacturing organisations, which may have limited applicability in the public sector, despite our efforts to ensure the questionnaire was appropriate for the public sector. There are several implications of the study for policymakers and public procurement practitioners, and for future research. Policymakers may need to consider how e-procurement and sustainable procurement policy objectives can be better aligned. There needs to be awareness that one policy might be pursued at the sacrifice of the other, particularly as e-procurement seems to hinder buying from SMEs. It may be appropriate for senior policymakers to provide guidance as to which policy should be prioritised. Practitioners may benefit from ensuring they have a range of purchasing practices in place that do not exclude SMEs, including more traditional approaches in parallel with e-procurement. Future research could investigate how these policy objectives might be better aligned, and how e-procurement tools and other forms of e-business might be developed to support different types of sustainable procurement, and how the trade-offs between them might be reconciled.