Petersen, D and Kadefors, A (2016) Social procurement and employment requirements in construction. In: Chan, P W and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 32nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2016, Manchester, UK.
Abstract
Public procurement of construction projects is increasingly used as a means to achieve political goals. In Sweden, social value criteria have become more common. In particular, public construction procurement is seen as a means to solve societal unemployment issues. Some municipalities and public clients now regularly include employment creating requirements when procuring construction services, and this also applies to some private owners of residential property in areas with high unemployment levels. However, many aspects relating to procedures regarding social criteria in procurement processes still remain unclear. For example, introducing such requirements presents new challenges relating to management systems and changing professional roles. The purpose of this paper is to develop a research agenda related to these challenges. Based on a review of government documents and academic literature a general overview of the emergence of social criteria as employment creating measures is presented. Firstly, by outlining the development and use of social criteria in a Swedish construction industry context, as described in local government policy documents as well as documentation describing some of the most important application examples. Secondly, by reviewing the topic of social criteria in procurement in international scientific literature in this field and summarizing the main themes and results. Tentative findings suggest that the formulation, use and context of social criteria needs to be further explored, as well as how projects are financially and qualitatively affected by social criteria. Also, research into which construction projects are more or less appropriate for social value measures needs highlighting in order to better predict how this trend will develop. Lastly, the role of both public procurement- and construction managers requires further study. This is especially relevant for studying how managers can implement and enforce social value measures in a sustainable, qualitative and efficient manner.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction; employment requirements; institutional change; social procurement |
| Index terms: | Sweden, documentation, owner, residential property, employment, procurement process, institutional change, management system, local government, manager, research agenda, emergence, municipality, unemployment, public client, construction industry, documents, construction manager, social value, construction project, public construction |
| Subjects: | management, Geography, production management, professional development, sociology, research management, building construction, industry analysis, administrative law, systems engineering, profession, construction type, practitioner, contractual arrangements, economic analysis |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Urban Studies, Legal Issues, Human Resources, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Construction Technology, Procurement, Business Strategy, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Geographical Context, Project Management, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here