This report is the final report for a research project conducted during the years 2011-2016 within the framework of the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences’ Flexit-programme. The three years of research became more numerous due to the project manager being on leave throughout periods of the employment. Flexit is a pilot project, where the Foundation seeks new flexible solutions to distribute research and researchers outside academia with the purpose of a) building bridges between humanistic/social scientific research and the industry, b) facilitate knowledge exchange and stimulate contacts to make sure more organizations outside academia can see and take advantage of the competency of newly graduated doctoral humanistic and social scientific students, and vice versa, c) influence the merit system to ensure that academia to a greater extent values experiences from the industry and vice versa, and d) to show alternative career alternatives for researchers within humanities and social sciences.
The research project originally had two primary purposes to investigate the phenomenon regarding environmental considerations in public procurement, green innovations and innovation processes within the construction sector. One purpose of the project was to, using a sociology of law research method developed to investigate norms in regulatory space, develop knowledge about the values steering public and private actors regarding their environmental impact, as well as extending the analysis to include values of both public and private actors regarding green innovations and innovation processes. Over the years the purpose has been broadened to include sustainability considerations in public procurement, which has come to mean an investigation of social considerations in public procurement. The definition of social considerations has in itself been the subject of investigation and has come to be defined subsequently. This has however intentionally been left an empirical definition based on what the area of research has included in the concept, which also varies. On the other hand, the perspective on social considerations has proven equivalent to environmental considerations in the regard that it is something beyond what originally was the intention of the regulation of public procurement of public procurement in European Law – the certification of the internal market and competition.
This brings me to the three most important findings from the research project. ONE is that sustainability considerations 2016 are integrated into public procurement practice to greater or lesser extent. TWO is that legislation is not a driving factor for sustainable public procurement practice. THREE is that change agents are determining variable for driving sustainable public procurement. Based on the conducted interviews with both those at the forefront irrespective of line of industry and those active within public procurement in the construction industry, it is clear that environmental considerations are integrated in the work irrespective of size of the organization in some way. Social considerations are known, but exist to a lesser degree and are as such to a lesser degree integrated in public procurement practice. This is partly explained by environmental considerations having been discussed for a longer period of time within research and practice related to public procurement, than has social considerations. At the start of the project the practice was very immature or underdeveloped regarding environmental considerations and social considerations were nearly inexistent in practice. When it comes to the second finding it is clear that the study of those at the forefront in sustainable public procurement that legislation is irrelevant and the clarifications that have been made regarding sustainable procurement have not affected their stance regarding sustainable procurement. In some cases they have not even been aware of it. Regarding the construction sector specifically it is also clear that legislation has not been the driving factor for the organizations, neither the private nor the public, to develop their sustainability work related to public procurement. It is driven change agents, professional codes, political leadership, client requirements or a desire to contribute to societal development that has been drivers. For the third most important finding it became apparent that the organizations at the forefront have named leadership as a success factor, as well as someone specific being in charge of the sustainability perspective in the procurement process or the organization’s development work.
The project’s international connection has been ensured through participation in several international conferences in procurement, sustainability and sociology of law, as well as the project manager’s participation in the project ProcSIBE, Procurement for Sustainability and Innovation in the Built Environment, which has a collaboration with Australia and the Netherlands in procurement research. Furthermore, the project manager has been employed in an international company with direct relations to the global company division within the company.
Some research informative activities have been conducted with connection outside academia to ensure the connection between university, Skanska Sweden AB and the public sector. A seminar was conducted in 2013 at an early stage of the research project with invited speakers from among others Skanska, the Sociology of Law Department and Uppsala University, development manager Åse Togerö at Skanska, professor Per Wickenberg and former PhD Candidate in public procurement Ardalan Shekarabi. In 2014 the project manager participated in the Future Days at Skanska and discussed research within sustainable public procurement. A seminar was conducted in 2015 highlighting social considerations in public procurement at Skanska’s offices, where representatives from municipalities, academia and industry came to discuss social considerations. Finally, the project manager conducted a workshop as part of a conference on circular economy in Skåne on circular procurement in May of 2016, with participants from academia but primarily from the industry and public sector. Within the research network ProcSIBE a wide network with multiple lines of industry, public sector and different academic institutes have been represented and participated in, and contributed to, the research of this project.
This partly clarifies how the project has contributed to increased collaboration between academia and organizations outside academia. Beyond the abovementioned exchanges the project has lead to the project manager participating in the reference group for the work on innovation procurement at the then Miljöstyrningsrådet, as well as being a contributing factor to a research project between ProcSIBE, Skanska, WSP and Volvo Cars to study how sustainable public procurement in large construction infrastructure projects can be simplified and supported with different existing or not yet existing tools.
The two most important publications are one that is submitted, Exploring Regulation Theory to Explain Sustainable Public Procurement, and awaits decision on publication describing sustainable public procurement from a regulation theory perspective and the other, Going Green in Construction, is a report published in a sociology of law report series indicating several findings, but above all contains empirical material that is missing today within this area of research and that can be used in future research.
The publication strategy has been to distribute the research in different forum and has for that reason taken the form of reports, anthologies, articles and interview articles in industry magazines. Open access has been ensured by all publications being freely available on the internet and journals with open access publication have been selected for submission of articles.