The role of sustainable public procurement in developing more sustainable business models

Justification of the paper Public procurement has a massive purchasing power. In the last fifteen years there has been a trend to incorporate sustainability criteria into public procurement. This has resulted in a demand from... [ view full abstract ]

Justification of the paper
Public procurement has a massive purchasing power. In the last fifteen years there has been a trend to incorporate sustainability criteria into public procurement. This has resulted in a demand from governmental procurers to companies to make their business models more sustainable. Although theories have been developed in the fields of sustainable public procurement and business models, the contribution of sustainable procurement to the development of more sustainable business models remains largely unexplored.

Purpose
This paper presents a literature review on the link between the public procurement process and the company development towards more sustainable business models. The literature review was complemented with a focus group with experts in the field of public procurement and business models.

Theoretical framework
Sustainable public procurement (Brammer and Walker, 2011)
Sustainable business models (Boons et al., 2013)
Organisational change management for sustainability (Lozano, 2013)
CS integration in business systems (Eccles et al., 2011)

Results and conclusions
A framework is developed to present the link between the procurement process and both the procurer and supplier business model.

Implications for Tipping Points
The outcomes of this paper contribute to the collective crescendo by clarifying the potential of the collaboration between procurement and business models. By using this potential, the incremental efforts in sustainable public procurement could generate changes in business models and vice versa. These changes will contribute to the generation of more sustainable attitudes and behavior of all the parties involved in the procurement process.

Key words:
Sustainable public procurement, sustainable business models, change management for sustainability, framework