Reid, S and Loosemore, M (2017) Motivations and barriers to social procurement in the Australian construction industry. In: Chan, P W and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 33rd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2017, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, UK.
Abstract
Social procurement involves the use of procurement to leverage social benefits in the supply chain, above and beyond the normal purchasing of construction products and services. Social procurement is growing in importance as public and private sector clients around the world include social value creation imperatives in their construction contracts. Through interviews with eight major contractors from the Australian construction industry the motivations behind social procurement and the barriers to implementation are explored. The results reveal a compliance-based culture which is largely a mechanistic response to regulatory and market regimes. The main challenges revolve around the lack of social value creating capacity in existing supply chains and in identifying appropriate and reliable social benefit organisations which understand the needs, culture and operational practices of the construction industry and of sufficient scale to work on large construction projects. Social benefit organisations are widely seen as a risk rather than an asset and best confined to low risk, low skilled, non-critical and off-site activities. The barriers facing these organisations in penetrating the industry are also formidable.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | social procurement; social value; motivations; barriers; Australia |
| Index terms: | purchasing, private sector, Australia, motivation, compliance, interview, social benefit, large construction project, implementation, construction industry, construction product, social value, construction contract |
| Subjects: | contract type, data collection methods, psychology, economic analysis, contractual arrangements, theoretical framing, Geography, organizational theory, health safety and environment, sociology, industry analysis, procurement strategy |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Project Management, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Procurement, Urban Studies, Human Resources |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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