Call for papers: "The new era of sustainable public procurement"

Societal challenges abound. Climate change, security, safety, migration, corruption, inequality, and many other challenges, are taking center stage in the world. Many challenges are connected to consumption patterns and can thus be influenced by these patterns. The government is one of these consumers. It is also a very large and influential consumer.

The power of public procurement

EU public procurement accounts for around € 2 trillion per year, US public procurement involves for around € 1.7 trillion per year, and worldwide public procurement involves for around 17% of the global GDP. As a large consumer, the government should in theory be able to use its purchasing to power to boost sustainable investments, a circular economy, job creation and innovations. But is it?

Realising the potential

Although the potential seems large, scientific insights on what the effects are of Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP), which strategies work when and where and even on what can be expected from SPP in relation to the global, regional and local challenges are hardly found, either scarce or hidden in grey literature.

To make SPP the game changer in the hands of the government it can be, we need research on the current status of SPP, in the complex interdisciplinary interactions that leads to effective or ineffective SPP. And we need answers to questions such as: What are barriers and drivers for succes? What are the effects of SPP on the environment, on social challenges, on markets and on innovation levels?

Topics 

This Special Issue plans to give an overview of the most recent advances in the field of SPP, including sustainable, social, inclusive, green, environmental, biodiverse and circular public procurement. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• insights in the status quo of sustainable public procurement
• insights in where most impact can be generated with sustainable public procurement
• properties of buying organizations that explain the uptake of sustainable public procurement
• detailed insights in to what extent barriers and drivers are more or less important in different contexts
• policy approaches for sustainable public procurement
• tender techniques for sustainable public procurement
• effects of collaboration on the uptake of sustainable public procurement
• effects of sustainable public procurement on the environment and social challenges
• effects of sustainable public procurement on markets and innovation

A resource for future research

We hope that this Special Issue will provide a state-of-the-art overview of this critical theme. It is our expectation that it will provide a resource for accessing seminal and current thinking, will provide a platform for future research, and offer new insights into how this field might contribute to solving pressing global challenges. 

Your papers

We welcome empirical and conceptual papers of every variety, including papers on green public procurement, circular public procurement and social public procurement. We are especially keen to welcome new perspectives and more challenging or provocative works that seek to propose original ways of thinking regarding sustainable public procurement. Papers might address global, national, regional, or local topics.

The deadline for manuscript submissions is 30 May 2022. We would be happy to receive a brief abstract or summary of your proposed paper, if you wish to enquire about the appropriateness of your submission for consideration in this Special Issue (contact details, see below). 

Guest editors of this Special Issue are:

Dr. Michiel C. Zijp (RIVM)
Prof. Dr. Fredo Schotanus (Utrecht University; UUCePP)
Dr. Cees J. Gelderman (Open University)