Purpose

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

Design/methodology/approach

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Findings

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

Research limitations/implications

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

Social implications

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

Originality/value

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

中文翻译：

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公共采购——价格接受者还是市场塑造者？

目的

本文考察了政府采购在多边开放贸易体系中作为社会政策机制的作用。全球政府法规正在转变，以促进跨国企业 (MNE) 更负责任的商业行为。然而，对可持续性可能对贸易构成歧视性壁垒的担忧阻碍了可持续公共采购 (SPP) 在国际层面的进展，引发了对世界贸易组织 (WTO) 政府采购协议 (GPA) 的作用和范围的质疑，使纳税人资助的合同与联合国 (UN) 可持续发展目标保持一致。

设计/方法/方法

本文以社会可持续性为重点，回顾了灰色和学术文献，以评估高收入国家公共采购政策和供应链立法的变化格局。

发现

领跑者国家正在对可持续公共采购采取强制性方法，尽职调查立法正在将供应链风险从声誉损害提升到法律责任。虽然技术创新和制成品的清洁、绿色生产在可持续公共采购文献中占主导地位，但可持续贫困、不平等和人权的社会方面仍然没有得到充分体现。

研究限制/影响

本文的范围仅限于审查 WTO-GPA (2012) 涵盖的政府采购。根据 WTO-GPA 门槛和防御类别的较小价值合同超出了本文的范围。

社会影响

本文重点关注企业对政府 (B2G) - 企业对政府 - 供应链中服务不足的社会可持续性主题，认为负责任的商业行为要成为竞争优势，必须在需求方面得到更有意义的奖励经济合作与发展组织中所有由纳税人资助的合同。本文介绍了无价采购的理念，将其作为一种机制来建立评估非财务可持续性目标的系统能力。

原创性/价值

为了建立基于社会和环境政策目标的竞争能力，本文在 B2G 合同中引入了无价采购的概念。