Social Public Purchasing: Addressing a Critical Void in Public Purchasing Research

• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Author: Fatima Hafsa,Nicole Darnall,Stuart Bretschneider
• Date: 01 September 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13438

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

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Research Article

Abstract: Since governments are the largest buyers globally, they have enormous purchasing power. Government

purchasing, therefore, has potential to be leveraged to improve social outcomes, such as helping disadvantaged

communities, ensuring labor rights, and minimizing negative environmental impacts. However, as yet, there is little

understanding about social public purchasing research in the field of public administration. We provide a theoretical

framework for organizing research around social public purchasing. We then survey both the scholarly and practitioner

research on social public purchasing in order to develop a clear understanding of the critical knowledge gaps and the

potential for important social public purchasing research.

Evidence for Practice

• Public purchasing includes direct purchase (contracts) and indirect purchases (grants, cash reimbursements,

and vouchers)

• Social public purchasing can be categorized according to the type of purchase (direct or indirect), and social

outcome timing (immediate or deferred).

• Public administration research, both scholarly and practitioner, has paid little attention to the increased use

of social public purchasing in policy making. In particular, very little attention has been given to indirect

purchases and deferred social outcomes.

• Public administration scholars and practitioners have an opportunity to address critical knowledge gaps

about social public purchasing, including policy adoption, policy outcomes, balancing competing policy

objectives, and implementation challenges.

Public Purchasing consists of governments’

purchase of goods and services. It accounts for

about 20 percent of global Gross Domestic

Product (GDP) and between 25 and 40 percent

of all U.S. tax dollars collected (Coggburn2003).

Increasingly, some governments are using public

purchasing to meet their broader social objectives,

also known as social public purchasing. Social public

purchasing policies are government purchasing rules

that explicitly value the economic, environmental,

and societal impacts of their purchases. Examples of

social public purchasing policies include purchasing

quotas for women- or minority-owned businesses,

preferences for locally produced products, set

asides for small business, expectations for fair labor

practices, and purchasing criteria for products with

reduced environmental impacts (Arrowsmith2010;

Arrowsmith and Kunzlik2009; McCrudden2004;

Stritch et al.2018). While anecdotal information

about these policies is emerging in fields such as

economic policy, business administration, and

innovation, public administration practitioners

and scholars have given it far less attention, even

though public purchasing is a central function of

administrative government.

Historically, public purchasing has been at the

periphery of public administration scholarship,

accounting for about 1 percent of the total publications

(Trammell, Abutabenjeh, and Dimand2019). Among

these publications, scholars have typically studied

contracting concerns involving contract design (Kim

and Brown2012; Malatesta and Smith2011), contract

management (Brown, Potoski, and Van Slyke2018;

Romzek and Johnston2002), and accountability

mechanisms in contracts (Allen et al.2016;

Girth2012; Romzek and Johnston2005). Less

attention has been given to social public purchasing

(Trammell, Abutabenjeh, and Dimand2019), such as

buying local, green purchasing, or responsible supply

chains. Additionally, we know very little about how

the practitioner community is discussing social public

purchasing in their professional articles.

This research aims to understand how social public

purchasing has been regarded by the most influential

Fatima Hafsa

Nicole Darnall

School of Sustainability, Arizona State University

Social Public Purchasing: Addressing a Critical Void in Public

Purchasing Research

Stuart Bretschneider

School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University

Stuart Bretschneider is a Foundation

Professor of Organization Design and Public

Administration at Arizona State University’s

School of Public Affairs. He is also Director

of ASU’s Center for Organization Research

and Design.

Email: stuart.bretschneider@asu.edu

Nicole Darnall is a Foundation Professor

of Management and Public Policy at Arizona

State University’s School of Sustainability

and Director and Co-founder of ASU’s

Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative.

Her research assesses organizations’ and

individuals’ sustainability behaviors.

Email: ndarnall@asu.edu

Fatima Hafsa is a Fulbright scholar

earning her PhD in Sustainability at

Arizona State University’s the School of

Sustainability. She holds a Master’s degree

in Material Engineering. Her research

interests include sustainable purchasing and

sustainable circular economy, particularly

for plastics.

Email: shafsa@asu.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 5, pp. 818–834. © 2021

The Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of

American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13438.

Social Public Purchasing: Addressing a Critical Void in Public Purchasing Research 819

outlets in public administration scholarship and practice and to pave

a way forward for future research. We begin by describing the basic

characteristics of public purchasing and social public purchasing.

We then provide a theoretical framework for organizing research

around social public purchasing. Next, we consider the historical

evaluation of social public purchasing policies enacted by the U.S.

federal government and other OECD countries. We then review

how public administration literature (scholarly and practitioner)

addresses public purchasing and social public purchasing. We pay

special attention to prior research on social public purchasing to

assess what has been studied to date and to identify potential gaps

that are important for public administration scholars to address.

Our findings show that the landscape of social public purchasing

policies in the United States is rich and varied. While the federal

government first implemented these policies in the 1800s,

their use has increased especially since the mid-1970s, with no

indication of a slowing trend. However, public administration

publications have focused on other topics, with only 4.2 percent

discussing issues of public purchasing. These articles focus almost

exclusively on aspects of public purchasing, rather than discussing

social public purchasing. More specifically, these articles discuss

the different aspects of contracting (Brown, Potoski, and Van

Slyke2018; Brown and Potoski2003; Kim and Brown2012),

public private partnerships (Reynaers2014; Wang et al.2018;

Yang, Hou, and Wang2013), and performance management

(Koning and Heinrich2013; Yang, Hsieh, and Li2009). Although

the proportion of public purchasing publications is greater in

practitioner association publications, less than 1 percent discuss

social public purchasing. These results point to a critical void

in the scholarly and practitioner literatures, especially given the

potential promise that social public purchasing policies have toward

improving economic, environmental, and societal outcomes. We

offer a justification for future research to consider the impact of

these policies and identify several research questions to advance the

field.

Public Purchasing

Public purchasing is defined as the purchase of goods and services

by all levels of government (Arrowsmith2010; OECD2017).

Funded by taxpayers, these purchases facilitate government

functioning and enable public agencies to provide public services

such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, and waste management

(Furneaux and Barraket2014).

Figure1 shows that governments carry out public purchasing

through two mechanisms: direct purchases and indirect purchases.

Direct purchasing, also commonly known as public procurement,

refers to contract purchases that are carried out by government

offices. For example, the Department of Defense uses direct

purchasing to purchase equipment (Ruttan2006; Salamon and

Elliott2002; U.S. Department of Treasury2020). Typically, scholars

and practitioners have interpreted public purchasing to refer to only

direct purchases (Boyne1998; Brown and Potoski2003; Romzek

and Johnston2005). This interpretation ignores governments’

indirect purchases where the government does not make the actual

purchase. Rather, for indirect purchases, government offices transfer

their purchasing authority to another organization or citizens.

Examples include government grants to nonprofit organizations to

provide social services to citizens such as healthcare for the elderly,

cash vouchers for food, and cash reimbursements for medicines

(Ashley and Van Slyke2012; Beam and Conlan2002; Breton1965;

Buchanan1953; Colin2005; Department for International

Development2011; Hipp and Warner2008; Lindert2013). While

indirect purchases are an important form of public purchasing,

scholars and practitioners typically have not considered indirect

public purchasing in their assessments of public purchasing. Instead,

they have focused on contracts with private sector vendors or service

providers. When considering the government’s overall purchasing

power and influence, it is important to include both its direct and

indirect purchases.

Government’s purchasing influence is significant. Public purchasing

amounts to approximately $9.5 trillion annually, accounting for

one-fifth of the global GDP and one-fourth of all government

spending (World Bank2017), making government the largest buyer

in most economies (McCrudden2004; OECD2017). Within

the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

(OECD) countries, public purchasing accounts for between 15 and

30 percent of GDP (OECD2017). Even in developing countries,

public purchasing accounts for between 10 and 15 percent of their

national GDP (UNEP2017). Within the United States, public

purchases are approximately 24 percent of GDP (Hafsa et al.2021).

Given its size and scope, all types of public purchases are susceptible

to mismanagement and corruption, which can lead to huge losses

to governments and taxpayers. To reduce these problems, public

purchases are heavily regulated. Over the past 100 years, local reform

movements and international trade organizations have helped

governments create systems of regulation-based laws and rules

(Arrowsmith et al.2011; OECD2017). Related to direct public

purchases, these regulations guide the various stages of the process,

which include budget plans, requests for bids, bid evaluation,

contract design, and performance assessments (Arrowsmith

et al.2011; Thai2001). They also impose accountability on

purchasers and vendors (Arrowsmith et al.2011; Hettne2013;

Figure 1 Public Purchasing