On 15 December 2022, SAPIENS Lead Researcher Rodrigo Lozano, Early Stage Researcher Felippe Santos, and Lead Researcher Maria Barreiro-Gen published together their article entitled “Developing a harmonic sustainable public procurement framework”.

This article was published (open access) in the journal Environment, Development and Sustainability. This journal is a peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary journal covering topics such as technical, economic, ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development; role of national and international agencies in sustainable development; role of political and economic instruments in sustainable development; and mutual interactions among society, development and environment, and their implications for sustainable development.

Article abstract

Sustainability is aimed at addressing the environmental and socio-economic issues of this generation and future ones. In this context, sustainable public procurement (SPP) has been proposed to link the consumption side (government) to the production side (companies), whilst addressing the four dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental, social, and time). This paper undertakes an analysis, through hermeneutics, of four sets of system elements of SPP: (1) demand-offering, which includes products, services, and their combination; (2) procurement specifications (technical, non-technical, and socio-cultural); (3) stakeholder interactions; and, (4) research disciplinary approaches. The analysis shows that despite most SPP efforts focussing on demand-offerings or specifications, there have been some framework proposals aimed at explaining the complexities and interactions between the system elements. Additionally, most research on SPP has been carried out through single disciplinary approaches. The paper proposes the Harmonic SPP framework, which integrates the demand-offering, specifications, stakeholder interactions, disciplinary approaches, and the four sustainability dimensions, where the harmonisation of their interrelations is sine qua non. The Harmonic SPP framework is aimed at providing a more holistic perspective to SPP and thus fostering more effective and efficient SPP research and implementation.

The full article is available (open access) on the Environment, Development and Sustainability website.

Rodrigo Lozano

Professor of Organisational Sustainability, University of Gävle
Specialy Chief Editor for Frontiers in Organisations for Sustainability

Felippe Santos

Early Stage Researcher n. 5, University of Gävle

Maria Barreiro-Gen

Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, University of Gävle