FW-HTF-P: Envisioning Public Procurement for a Sustainable Future

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The United States (U.S.) public sector constitutes the single largest marketplace across the globe, accounting for 24% of U.S. GDP. Therefore, the decisions of the public sector play a significant role in sustainability, which affects environmental, social, and economic outcomes. The public sector also creates enormous opportunities to leverage its purchasing power to advance sustainable public procurement and sustainability in general. However, at the local level, only one-quarter of U.S. cities have adopted sustainable public procurement, and of these, only about half indicate that their efforts have been successful. A critical factor affecting sustainable public procurement success is the extent to which procurement managers adopt existing, emerging, and future digital technologies to acquire and integrate accurate data into their current procurement processes, and to understand how sustainability impacts of their purchase decisions. These technologies play a pivotal role for supporting decision making, engaging stakeholders, gathering information in multi-tier supply chains, and monitoring and measuring progress towards achieving sustainability goals. Even so, the integration of digital technologies into public procurement to advance sustainability objectives remains uncharted territory. This planning project will define and provide recommendations on how complex digital technologies can transform public procurement to improve sustainability outcomes. The findings will be relevant to managers by providing insights on the training and education procurement workers will need in their future roles. The findings will also inform and improve public procurement and the broader public policy emphasis to leverage the massive purchasing power of the public sector to advance broader sustainability goals. This research focuses on how public procurement managers can leverage existing, emerging, and future technologies that comprise the digital ecosystem to achieve their sustainability goals. It begins to uncover public organizations’ perception of sustainability and the extent to which they currently balance economic, environmental, and social concerns. The diverse team will integrate different theoretical approaches to offer clarity around the disruptions created by emerging technologies to the procurement process, and how these technologies are likely to redefine the skillset of future PP managers. It does so by collecting qualitative data from technology developers, leaders of public organizations, and procurement managers to identify the initial theoretical constructs needing further development and leading to high-impact, fundamental research questions and testable research hypotheses that are anchored in convergence theories. This research will: (1) identify the emerging socio-technological landscape of public procurement and assess the factors needed to support and empower managers; and, (2) assess the opportunities/barriers for integrating sustainability objectives into procurement. Both factors have significant implications to the future work of public procurement managers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.