Sustainable Public Procurement—External Forces and Accountability
Department of Marketing & Supply Management, Open University of the Netherlands, 6419AT Heerlen, The Netherlands
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Sustainability 2019, 11(20), 5696; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205696
Received: 8 September 2019 / Revised: 2 October 2019 / Accepted: 12 October 2019 / Published: 15 October 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Procurement for Sustainability)
Public agencies feel the need to advance sustainability and use procurement as an instrument to do so. Many studies focused on internal forces, explaining the limited success of sustainable public procurement. This study focused on how external forces are able to hold municipalities accountable for sustainable procurement. Three mid-sized Dutch municipalities were investigated through an extensive document study and 34 semi-structured interviews. The results show minor legal pressure to enforce sustainable procurement. National legislation, guidelines and principles are considered non-binding, due to a lack of penalties in the case of non-compliance. Real pressure stems from lobbying by branch organizations and political pressure initiated by citizens. In contrast with the New Public Management principles, municipalities appear to place more emphasis on legal and financial accountability, in contrast to performance accountability. Accountants mainly focus on legitimacy and the finance department only monitors spending within budget. The hybrid organization of the procurement function seems to impede sustainability development. Only the larger projects are subject to sustainability requirements, set by centralized purchasing departments. Smaller projects, responsible for 2/3 of the total spend are managed by decentralized groups, remaining under the radar of sustainability policies.
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Keywords:
public procurement; sustainability; external pressures; legal accountability; financial accountability; performance accountability
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Vluggen, R.; Gelderman, C.J.; Semeijn, J.; van Pelt, M. Sustainable Public Procurement—External Forces and Accountability. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5696. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205696
AMA Style
Vluggen R, Gelderman CJ, Semeijn J, van Pelt M. Sustainable Public Procurement—External Forces and Accountability. Sustainability. 2019; 11(20):5696. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205696
Chicago/Turabian StyleVluggen, Rob; Gelderman, Cees J.; Semeijn, Janjaap; van Pelt, Marc. 2019. "Sustainable Public Procurement—External Forces and Accountability" Sustainability 11, no. 20: 5696. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11205696
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