Purpose - While the contribution of supply chain management to sustainability is receiving increasing attention in the private sector, there is still a scarcity of parallel studies of public ...procurement. Hence the purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which local government authorities in England use their procurement function to foster sustainable development.Design methodology approach - The paper uses an exploratory approach. Based on a review of the existing literature, qualitative research into leading local government authorities is undertaken to draw out the multiple ways in which public procurement can support sustainable development.Findings - At an aggregate level, local government procurers have adopted a wide range of initiatives to address all three aspects of sustainability. These are condensed into a typology of sustainable supply chain management for the public sector.Research limitations implications - The study highlights the importance of supporting factors, like transparency, organisational culture and strategy as well as leeway in public policy, for sustainable supply chain management in the public sector.Practical implications - The experience of the best practice local authorities deserves wider recognition among practitioners, policy makers and academic researchers, not least given the objective of the UK government to be among the leaders in the European Union on sustainable procurement by 2009.Originality value - The proposed typology of sustainable supply chain management for the public sector can serve as a basis for future research in this area.
The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a paradox perspective on corporate sustainability. By explicitly acknowledging tensions between different desirable, yet interdependent and conflicting ...sustainability objectives, a paradox perspective enables decision makers to achieve competing sustainability objectives simultaneously and creates leeway for superior business contributions to sustainable development. In stark contrast to the business case logic, a paradox perspective does not establish emphasize business considerations over concerns for environmental protection and social well-being at the societal level. In order to contribute to the consolidation of this emergent field of research, we offer a definition of the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability and a framework to delineate its descriptive, instrumental, and normative aspects. This framework clarifies the paradox perspective's contents and its implications for research and practice. We use the framework to map the contributions to this thematic symposium on paradoxes in sustainability and to propose questions for future research.
This paper proposes a systematic framework for the analysis of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework is based on the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability, which ...stresses the need for a simultaneous integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions without, a priori, emphasising one over any other. The integrative view presupposes that firms need to accept tensions in corporate sustainability and pursue different sustainability aspects simultaneously even if they seem to contradict each other. The framework proposed in this paper goes beyond the traditional triad of economic, environmental and social dimensions and argues that tensions in corporate sustainability occur between different levels, in change processes and within a temporal and spatial context. The framework provides vital groundwork for managing tensions in corporate sustainability based on paradox strategies. The paper then applies the framework to identify and characterise four selected tensions and illustrates how key approaches from the literature on strategic contradictions, tensions and paradoxes—i.e., acceptance and resolution strategies—can be used to manage these tensions. Thereby, it refines the emerging literature on the integrative view for the management of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework also provides managers with a better understanding of tensions in corporate sustainability and enables them to embrace these tensions in their decision making.
The literature on corporate social performance advocates that firms address social issues based on instrumental as well as moral rationales. While both rationales trigger initiatives to increase ...corporate social performance, these rest on fundamentally different and contradicting foundations. Building on the literature on organizational ambidexterity and paradox in management, we propose in this conceptual article that ambidexterity represents an important determinant of corporate social performance. We explain how firms achieve higher levels of corporate social performance through the ambidextrous ability to simultaneously pursue instrumentally and morally driven social initiatives. We distinguish between a balance dimension and a combined dimension of ambidexterity, which both enhance corporate social performance through distinct mechanisms. With the balance dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives compensate for each other – which increases the scope of corporate social performance. With the combined dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives supplement each other – which increases the scale of corporate social performance. The article identifies the most important determinants and moderators of the balance and the combined dimension to explain the conditions under which we expect firms to increase corporate social performance through ambidexterity. By focusing on the interplay and tensions between different types of social initiatives, an ambidextrous perspective contributes to a better understanding of corporate social performance. Regarding managerial practice, we highlight the role of structural and behavioral factors for achieving higher corporate social performance through the simultaneous pursuit of instrumental and moral initiatives.
The extant literature on cross-national differences in approaches to corporate social responsibility (CSR) has mostly focused on developed countries. Instead, we offer two inter-related studies into ...corporate codes of conduct issued by developing country multinational enterprises (DMNEs). First, we analyse code adoption rates and code content through a mixed methods design. Second, we use multilevel analyses to examine country-level drivers of differences in code content—specifically, elements of a country’s National Business System (NBS). We find that DMNEs are much more likely to adopt a code of conduct than their domestic counterparts; however, this does not translate into greater code comprehensiveness. We also find support for the ‘substitute view’ of CSR in developing countries, i.e. that MNEs from poorer countries and from countries with lower governance effectiveness tend to express more comprehensive commitments. However, this dynamic does not extend to a country’s labour system; instead, CSR appears here to match the efficiency of a country’s labour market, thus reflecting the ‘mirror view’ of CSR.
This article provides a conceptual framework for understanding key psychological barriers to implementing sustainable development in procurement process by local government and health care ...authorities. This task is an important one as a comprehension of psychological barriers is a prerequisite for understanding how individuals engage with the often more visible technical, budgetary or regulatory barriers in sustainable procurement. The article highlights how progress towards sustainable procurement is hampered by a combination of (1) individual factors; (2) organizational factors; (3) small group adaptation processes; (4) adaptation processes within the organization; and (5) external adaptation processes between organizations. The framework thus contributes to filling the conceptual space between human agent and organizational structure by pointing to the importance of cognitive filters and ideational resources that interact at various levels within an organization and in the complex network of formal or informal partners that surround it.
The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question, I ...propose to treat CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which contain concrete ‘management techniques’. I then analyse the global diffusion of one CSR management technique, a CSR guidance document by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC), which suggests that companies could address CSR as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Following its life-cycle through the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth stages allows me to identify forms of horizontal diffusion, that is, diffusion among peers within a particular sector or country, and vertical diffusion, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other. At each stage of the life-cycle, the success of the management technique seems to be aided by factors that treat the management technique as universally applicable. In themselves, all of these claims to universal applicability are easily countered by a more critical reading of the argumentation; yet, it is the way in which the nested levels influence each other, that is, the management technique feeding into management models and management rhetorics, that tends to give the notion of universal applicability of CSR its persuasiveness.
In contrast to the recent rise to economic importance of offshore finance centres (OFCs), the topic of taxation has so far created little interest among scholars of corporate social responsibility ...(CSR). This paper makes two contributions to addressing this lacuna. Applying a range of influential normative theories of ethics, it first offers an ethical evaluation of tax havens. Second, the paper examines what use large firms that are headquartered in two OFCs—Bermuda and the Cayman Islands—make of formal CSR tools. The emerging duplicity in tax havenbased companies professing social responsibility highlights once more the political nature of CSR, where at least some firms and/or industries can successfully limit government power to enact regulation as well as shape the discourse around CSR. The study of CSR in OFC-based firms thus calls into question the usefulness of the often quoted definition of CSR as going beyond the law.
Codes of conduct have become the perhaps most often used tool to manage corporate social responsibility (CSR). Researchers have primarily analysed such documents at company-wide or trans-company ...levels, whereas there is a dearth of studies into the use of codes for particular corporate functions. Hence, this article will examine one particular group of sub-company level codes, namely codes of conduct that stipulate CSR criteria for suppliers. Examining such ethical sourcing policies adopted by the FTSE100 corporations, the article draws out what environmental, social and economic issues large corporations perceive to be important in the management of their supply chains. At an aggregate level, the coverage of CSR issues is rather extensive, yet at the level of the individual corporation a degree of selectivity in the issues that are addressed becomes noticeable. The code content analysis furthermore confirms the business case and public pressure to be the most important drivers of CSR. Finally, the study highlights the role of isomorphic processes in the adoption of CSR tools.
Public procurement in industrialized nations accounts for a significant share of gross domestic product; hence it is imperative for local, regional and national economic development to utilize this ...potential. However, previous discussions of entrepreneurship and small business policy have by and large marginalized public sector procurement. As a contribution to giving greater salience to the linkages between regional development, entrepreneurship and public procurement, this paper presents empirical results of a qualitative study into local government authorities in the United Kingdom. In particular, it draws out a range of enablers and barriers for sourcing from small- and medium-sized enterprises that were perceived by procurement managers. The focus on public sector procurement furthermore leads to a more systematic theoretical elaboration of entrepreneurship policy as being based on legal authority or the market or network effects from geographic proximity.
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