Determinants of local government innovation: the case of green public procurement in the United States

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-10-2021-0239
• Published date: 03 June 2022
• Date: 03 June 2022
• Pages: 584-602
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management
• Author: Ana Maria Dimand

Determinants of local government

innovation: the case of green public

procurement in the United States

Ana Maria Dimand

School of Public Service, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, USA

Abstract

Purpose –Green public procurement (GPP) may be a viable solution and an innovative policy tool for public

managers to address complex environmental issues facing communities globally. Given their substantial

purchasing power, local GPP initiatives and success can accelerate a transition toward a more sustainable

society through governments’influence over the private sector. The study’s central research question is: What

are the factors associated with US local governments’engagement with GPP practices?

Design/methodology/approach –This research applies the Mohr’s (1969) model of motivations, obstacles

and resources (MOR) and draws on original, comprehensive and nationalsurvey data collected in collaboration

with NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement to explain adoption of GPP as an innovative policy tool. To

ensure the robustness of the findings, the data are analysed by running two types of regression –ordinal

logistic and negative binomial –using two different operationalizations for the dependent variable, a GPP scale

(ordinal) and a GPP scorecard (count).

Findings –The decision surrounding GPP adoption is ultimately driven by organizations’strategic visions,

organizations’familiarity with the GPP concept and practices, and mandates from the federal government

through funding mechanisms.

Originality/value –This study offers guidance to both academic researchers and policymakers in public

management and public budgeting and finance on strategies and policy options to expand GPP adoption and

utilization.

Keywords Green public procurement, Environmental policy, Policy innovation, Sustainability

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Climate change, increasing population, resource depletion and environmental degradation

are some of the most complex issues facing communities globally (Wang et al., 2012). In the

United States, some of the consequences of climate change are related to temperature shifts,

sea level rise, precipitation changes, migration of species, changes in the ecosystem and forest

fires (Chen, 2011). These changes affect different stakeholders, individuals, businesses,

industry sectors, the economy, and have a severe negative impact on health and quality of life

(Chen, 2011). Public managers need solutions to adapt to and cope with such challenges

(Adger et al., 2003).

Green public procurement (GPP) may be a viable solution and an innovative

environmental policy tool to public manager s. US local governments spend yearly

approximately $1.72tn on purchasing goods and services (Stritch et al., 2020). Given

municipalities’substantial purchasing power, GPP practices at the local level can speed up a

transition toward a more sustainable society. It explicitly incorporates in the traditional

procurement process environmentally conscious criteria and becomes an effective demand-

side tool to influence private sectors’products and services (Edler and Georghiou, 2007).

IJPSM

35,5

584

The financial support from the FIU University Graduate School through the Dissertation Evidence

Acquisition Fellowship and the Dissertation Year Fellowship has greatly contributed to the completion

of this work.

Twitter handle: @AnaDimand

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-3558.htm

Received 13 October 2021

Revised 31 January 2022

Accepted 2 May 2022

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 35 No. 5, 2022

pp. 584-602

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-10-2021-0239

This research applies the Mohr’s (1969) model of motivations, obstacles and resources

(MOR) to explain adoption of GPP as an innovative policy tool. The study posits the following

research question: What are the factors associated with US local governments’engagement

with GPP practices? Drawing on an original, comprehensive, and national survey data

collected in collaboration with NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement, the paper finds

that the decision to adopt GPP is correlated to strategic visions, familiarity with the concept,

and mandates from the federal government through funding mechanisms.

This paper is important for several reasons. First, the essay advances scholarly

understandings of factors that may facilitate or hinder GPP adoption in the US local

government context. Through the theoretical lens of Mohr’s (1969) model of internal

determinants for policy innovation adoption, a wide range of political, economic,

demographic, ideological and managerial correlates are examined and tested for potential

motivations, obstacles, and resources needed. Research findings offer guidance to both

academic researchers and policymakers in public management and public budgeting and

finance on strategies and policy options to expand GPP adoption and utilization. Second, it

primarily relies on data collected in 2018 from a novel, comprehensive national survey,

designed and implemented by the author in close collaboration with NIGP.

The paper is structured as follow s. First, an introduction to public procur ement is offered

coupled with a theoretical linkage connecting public procurement to policy innovation.

Then, the concept and practi ces of GPP is introduced, as an innovativ e environmental policy

tool. It is followed by a literature review comprising the framework of the study, research

question and hypotheses. Next, data and methods employed to test the hypotheses are

presented. The study concl udes with a discussion and con clusion section that depict s the

implications for research an d practice, the limitation of th e study and direction for future

research.

Literature review

Innovation: from public procurement to green public procurement

Innovation refers to “all public measures to induce innovations and/or speed up diffusion of

innovations through increasing the demand for innovations, defining new functional

requirement for products and services or better articulating demand”(Edler and Georghiou,

2007, p. 952). As opposed to invention, innovation encompasses the adoption of a policy that a

government has not previously utilized –not necessarily an altogether a new approach (Berry

and Berry, 1990;Krause, 2011).

Historically, organizations have employed a lowest initial cost criterion for purchasing

goods and services out of the conviction that the lowest cost would render efficiency and

effectiveness (Rainville, 2017). Yet, currently, procurement has outgrown its purely

administrative function (Trammell et al., 2020;Abd Razak et al., 2016) evolving to be an

innovative demand-side policy tool that incorporate other policy goals into the procurement

process –e.g. environmental protection, social equity, sustainability, innovation (Edler and

Georghiou, 2007;Storsj€

o and Kachali, 2017;Hsueh et al., 2020;Hafsa et al., 2021;Chen

et al., 2021).

One such innovative policy tool is GPP. GPP refers to the integration of environmental

criteria into all stages of the procurement process to encourage the spread of environmentally

sound products and services, by seeking and choosing solutions that have the least possible

impact on the environment throughout their whole life cycle [adapted from Bouwer et al.

(2005)]. GPP was used interchangeably with the term “sustainable public procurement”

(Cheng et al., 2018). Alongside environmental protection, sustainable public procurement

encompasses the social and economic secondary outcomes of procurement (Cheng et al.,

2018). This paper focuses on the environmental aspect of sustainability.

Green public

procurement

585