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Human resources practices, particularly regarding environmental training, play a key role in the dissemination of sustainable supply chain practices, especially sustainable procurement. Both environmental training and sustainable procurement can prompt environmental maturity (EM) among organizations. However, little is known about the relationship between environmental training and the adoption of sustainable procurement in public sector organizations of emerging economies, such as Brazil. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between environmental training and the adoption of sustainable procurement in three Brazilian public/state universities.

This research is qualitative and includes an exploratory study based on in-depth interviews with experts from the procurement section of Brazilian public universities. A methodological framework is proposed to analyze the results. The main questions that guided this study were: is there a relationship between the environmental-training initiatives and the adoption of sustainable procurement? Does this relationship, whether positive or negative, improve the maturity of environmental sustainability? And what is the future outlook for this issue in the context of public universities in Brazil?

According to the results’ analysis, the impact of sustainable procurement practices among the public organizations analyzed was almost void. The environmental training produced limited accomplishments, although respondents viewed it as a source of potential improvement, which indicates a co-evolution of sustainable procurement, environmental training and EM. In the cases analyzed, an alignment was identified among the levels of sustainable procurement and environmental training adoption.

It was identified that the lacks of training and support from senior management, environmental culture, great bureaucracy and economic factors were considered barriers and difficulties to implementing environmental procurement practices. These barriers deserve further study.

There is a lack of research on the relationship between environmental training and the adoption of sustainable procurement in emerging economies and in public sector organizations.

This paper aims to analyze regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement in Southeast Asia and provide a reconstruction of regulation regarding the sustainable construction procurement to prevent land degradation.

This was done through legal research methods, mainly historical and systematical interpretation. The approaches used in this paper are the conceptual approach, statute approach and comparative approach.

By analyzing the related legal norms, it can be understood that many nations in Southeast Asia do not have regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement. Between Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, only Indonesia has a ministrial regulation that provides general norms regarding sustainable construction procurement. Regarding the reconstruction of regulation, the bare minimum standards consist of principle, indicators, pillar, the phases of the procurement, law enforcement, both preventive and repressive, and sustainable procurement committee.

This research is limited to regulation in Southeast Asian region. By analyzing the regulation, this paper will provide a reconstruction of regulations regarding sustainable construction procurement that will act as an ground rules. Having the same ground rules will create synergies between countries in Southeast Asia to apply the principles of sustainable procurement and move together toward to prevent land degradation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic legal research that compares regulations from three nations in Southeast Asia regarding sustainable construction procurement and also the first paper to provide reconstruction of regulation regarding sustainable construction procurement to prevent land degradation.

The purpose of this study is to discuss policy review in the interest of sustainable innovations in Malaysia’s public procurement. This study also offers the overall relationship between existing policies related to sustainable innovations in public procurement and the coherences towards the four dimensions of sustainable innovations.

This study outlines the current policies in Malaysia which are related to sustainable innovation initiatives and explores the cohesiveness that appears disconnected and understood separately. Policy content analysis is conducted on the current policies related to sustainable innovations in the context of Malaysia’s public procurement.

This study observed that the current policies related to sustainable innovations in public procurement are actually interconnected with each other through a hierarchical framework. This study also demonstrates that the 12th Malaysia Plan has comprehensively encompassed every aspect of the environment, social, economic and innovation to contribute to one primary goal – green economic growth.

The proposed policy framework is expected to be beneficial for the administrator executive among the civil servant to connect the independent policies and, at the same time, contribute to the overall goal of green economic growth. Through a broad policy structure too, this study helps the industry player to recognize their potential in any area related to sustainable innovation.

The policy framework illustrated is new to the literature, especially in Malaysia’s context. The compilation of current policy grounded by the 12th Malaysia Plan has not been presented in any publications.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a field-level examination of the adoption of sustainable procurement in social housing. It explores the role of regulation and procurement consortia in sustainable procurement.

The study employs a case study of the UK social housing sector and uses an online survey (n=116) of UK Housing Associations. Factor analysis identifies three parsimonious dimensions of sustainable procurement. Attitudinal data are analysed to explore the field-level adoption of sustainable procurement and the role of consortia.

The results delineate sustainable procurement activities into three factors; direction setting, supplier-centric assurance and local socially oriented supply. High yet sup-optimal levels of sustainable procurement activity are revealed. Prevailing attitudes identify positive commitments to sustainable procurement at individual, organisational and sector levels. The value of network collaboration is identified. Tenants as critical stakeholders do not prioritise sustainable procurement creating challenge for inclusivity. Regulators are seen to a have low level of sustainable procurement knowledge and procurement consortia a high perceived knowledge.

Results provide insight into the effect of sustainable procurement policy, the role of regulators and network structures and consortia, raising issues around legitimacy, coopetition, stakeholder engagement, performance measurement, and functional/sectoral maturity.

The identification of the potential exclusion of tenants in sustainability debates is particularly significant to deliver social value.

The relative newness of the social housing sector and its quasi-public sector status provides an original contribution to the consortia and sustainable procurement literatures.

This study aims to highlight the effect of individual attributes of procurement professionals on goals concerning public procurement of sustainable innovation. Several barriers haven been observed regarding the application of public money to achieve these goals. Most research concerning these barriers focuses on organizational factors. Corporate initiatives are typically presented as a way forward tot achieve sustainable innovation. Less attention is paid to the efforts and attributes of the individual procurement professional.

A questionnaire was sent to 283 officials, involved in the procurement process of a large public organization.

As expected, a lack of top management support has a negative impact on sustainable innovation. Legal and regulatory complexity is less of a hindrance. The results indicate that both individual innovativeness and individual collectivism have a significant positive effect on sustainable innovation. Findings further suggest that an important way for an organization to achieve sustainable innovation is to allow individuals sufficient discretion to pursue sustainable initiatives. Many initiatives can be attributed to the individual innovativeness of procurement professionals.

The relation beween individual attributes of procurement professionals on the application of public money to achieve goals of sustainable innovation is investigated and can serve as a basis for further sudy on this subject.

It is unclear as to what extent sustainable procurement is being practised in Ireland and what barriers there are to implementing it in organisations. This study provides the first complete insight into the use of sustainable procurement in Irish commercial semi-state bodies. It explores the extent and type of use of sustainable procurement plus identifies and examines the challenges to its use. A deductive approach is utilised to determine the barriers. Eleven participants, nine from the commercial semistate bodies and two experts with knowledge of this subject, are interviewed using semi-structured questions. The research findings show that sustainable procurement is being practised in the majority of the commercial semi-state bodies. Definition of sustainable procurement, the absence of mandatory guidelines, cost, time and a dearth of sustainable procurement knowledge by suppliers are some of the main barriers put forward by participants.

This study aimed at determining the decisive factors for achieving sustainable procurement in construction projects.

Questionnaire survey of principal stakeholders involved in construction project delivery within client, consulting and contracting organisations in Nigeria were conducted to assess stakeholders' perspectives on the decisive factors for achieving sustainable procurement in construction projects using importance weights. A total of 243 questionnaires were distributed and a response rate of 51% (123 questionnaires were adequately filled and returned) was achieved. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilised in analysing elicited data.

The results from data analysis showed that “satisfaction – including workforce satisfaction and user satisfaction”, “value for money” and “creating a healthy, nontoxic environment – including high indoor air quality” were the top most three decisive factors for achieving sustainable procurement in construction projects in Nigeria.

An understanding of these decisive factors can help principal stakeholders in the construction industry of developing countries to facilitate the development of methods required in supporting the adoption of sustainable procurement practice.

This paper aims to identify, using a literature review and expert panel input, what impedes organizations from implementing sustainable procurement, particularly in an emerging economy context.

The extant literature review was carried out to explore and identify the barriers to sustainable procurement. Using interpretive structural modeling (ISM), the authors established a contextual relationship among the 22 identified barriers. These barriers are then classified into different categories, using the matrice d’impacts cross-multiplication appliqúe an classment (MICMAC) technique, based on their driving and dependence power.

The findings improve our understanding of the critical barriers and their direct and indirect effect on each other in obstructing sustainable procurement practices. The study is the first of its kind in identifying the barriers to sustainable procurement and developing a hierarchical relationship among barriers using an integrated ISM–MICMAC methodology based on data from an emerging economy (Pakistan). With a focus on sustainable practices, this study also responds to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The results of the hierarchical model help understand which barriers are the most crucial to be fixed immediately (i.e. absence of environmental laws and lack of consumer pressure) and how different barriers could influence each other, specifically in emerging economies. The practitioners can use the findings to make more informed decisions to mitigate the crucial barriers that could impede their goals of sustainable procurement.

The study is the first of its kind to identify the barriers to sustainable procurement and develop a contextual relation and hierarchical framework in the Pakistani context.

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

This paper presents the results of a survey of perceptions on sustainable procurement (SP) in the United Nations (UN). It is the first of its kind to systematically analyse the issue of SP in the UN system. While the UN has a tremendous opportunity to support their objective of sustainable development through SP practices, significant obstacles still block the full implementation of this goal. The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers to implementing SP practices in the UN system. Based on an online survey that yielded 282 responses, we identified a framework of SP measures and barriers, and conducted a regression analysis to identify underlying correlations. We find significant correlation between good SP practices and low demand, performance measurement and tool barriers.