Troje, D (2018) Rhetorical strategies to diffuse social procurement in construction. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK.
Abstract
Social procurement – procurement which aims to create social value e.g. in terms of creating employment opportunities for disadvantaged people – are increasingly implemented in the construction sector. Social procurement is novel in many countries and is often perceived as complex, and recent research has found that actors who work with social procurement spend considerable time and effort in arguing for its usefulness for achieving social objectives. This paper draws upon research from Sweden and Australia, and builds on interviews with actors working in the construction sector. Through an institutional perspective, the paper investigates the institutional logics, and subsequent narratives constructed from these logics, actors use for implementing and legitimizing social procurement. The findings show that actors lean on institutionalized market-based logics when arguing for social procurement, which are constructed into cognitive, normative and regulative narratives. These narratives are characterized by a commercial, sales-related discourse, which aims to “sell” social procurement to other actors. In addition, social procurement stem from a logic of creating social value, rather than commercial value. This means that these sale-focused narratives are also coupled with “emotion work”, where actors working with social procurement emphasize the individual disadvantaged people targeted in the implementation of social criteria, and argue for these people’s personal benefit. The combination of drawing upon well-established logics to provide rational narratives and to engage in emotion work by “personalizing” social procurement may enable these social criteria to become “business as usual” in the construction sector. This paper contributes insight into how language influence the spread, legitimization, and attempted institutionalization of a novel phenomenon. The findings point to the discursive strategies actors use when they try to implement social procurement, and thereby provide insight into a scarcely investigated phenomenon which is currently unfolding in the construction sector.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | employment requirements; rhetoric; social procurement; Sweden |
| Index terms: | institutionalization, Sweden, Australia, strategy, employment, drawing, interview, institutional logic, construction sector, implementation, social value, narrative |
| Subjects: | contractual arrangements, technical documentation, data collection methods, industry analysis, sociology, Geography, qualitative and interpretive research, theoretical framing, management |
| Topics: | Geographical Context, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Procurement, Roles and Professions, Human Resources, Urban Studies, Design Practice |
| 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