TraPP

Background
Public Procurement (accounting for an average of 16% of GDP across the European Union) has the potential to support the diffusion of innovative products and practices that increase the sustainability potential in markets and business models. When applied at a local level, public procurement can serve as a mechanism for facilitating sustainability transformations through the ways in which the supply chains for public sector contracts are organized. This can involve following sustainability objectives (such as improved environmental performance, job creation, training opportunities) in local economies. However, to date the linking of sustainability transformations and the supply chain management issues in public procurement is not fully developed.

Goals
The project has 3 main goals:

• Understand the role of capacities in institutions and across the supply chain in local government projects and how these can be operationalized to create transformative change.
• Explore the opportunities and barriers between current institutional pressures on local governments in implementing public procurement strategies and the integration of criteria into supplier assessments that have transformative potential.
• Develop a pathway to incorporate local initiatives alongside top-down directives and evaluation systems to guide public spending implementation and evaluation.

Research Questions
This study will answer the following research questions:

• What are the institutional pressures, drivers, opportunities and barriers which affect the ability for procurement processes to deliver transformative change?
• How are criteria for choosing suppliers to deliver public projects specified in the calls for tender of these projects?
• How can these barriers be identified and overcome to maximize the transformative potential of public procurement?

Expected Results
The research will advance understandings of supply chain capacities in current public procurement processes and associated criteria applied in calls for tender. Recommendations will be made on how these can be enhanced towards delivering transformative change. This brings together the fields of sustainable supply chain management, public administration, environmental assessment, and local development. The project will produce research articles, material for sessions at international conferences, and content for the IOER forum.