Learning to do good: developing capabilities to deliver social value from public procurement within English public authorities

• Date: 14 June 2024
• Pages: 729-747
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-05-2023-0145
• Published date: 14 June 2024
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management
• Author: Chris Lonsdale,Nicholas le Mesurier

Learning to do good: developing

capabilities to deliver social value

from public procurement within

English public authorities

Chris Lonsdale and Nicholas le Mesurier

Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Abstract

Purpose –This paper aims to explore how social procurement (SP)-related capabilities might be developed

within public authorities.

Design/methodology/approach–The paper utilizes qualitative research, based upon an inductive research

design. This leads to a model to inform future research and practice.

Findings –Within the context of a “disconnected and nascent institutional field of practice”(Loosemore et al.,

2023), the research generated rich data illustrating how certain English public authorities have developed

relatively mature SP capabilities and applied them within the procurement process. The former included the

appointment of “champions”; the founding of groups/units; training using webinars, online resources and case

studies; “toolkits”, including policy documents, process guidance and measurement tools and networking. The

latter included consultation with social value recipients and close engagement with both internal stakeholders

and suppliers. The research also revealed the internal political skills of “champions”, as SP challenges

incumbent logics regarding procurement objectives and practices.

Practical implications –First, the paper provides a potential roadmap for organisational capability

development. Second, the research makes clear that public authorities should not seek to reinvent the capability

wheel. Engagement with peers, advisory bodies, established “toolkits”, etc. is imperative, with much expertise

publicly available. Third, it also suggests that smaller public authorities might seek to act as part of a

consortium rather than go it alone, given the investment required for effective SP. Fourth, the research showed

that practitioners need to understand SP as not simply a development challenge but alsoa political one.

Originality/value –The paper contributes to the literature by analysing SP from the largely overlooked

resource-based perspective, by providing rich data on buy-side practice, by usefully adding to the literature’s

emerging “practice theme”and by offering guidance to buy-side managers within public authorities.

Keywords Public procurement, Social value, Organisational capabilities, Social procurement

Paper type Original Article

Introduction

Social procurement (SP) has a long history, especially in some countries, for example, the

United States of America, where it is traced back to the 19th century (McCrudden, 2004).

Recent research focusses on “new social procurement”(Barraket, 2020, p. 195), seen in, for

example, Africa, Australasia, Europe, North America and South-East Asia (Lou et al., 2023).

SP is understood here as procurement activity consciously aimed at delivering additional

community well-being beyond what would be delivered via narrow economic regulatory

criteria. It has been targeted in recent years at the disparate and critical issues of social

exclusion, climate change and regional economic development (Awuzie and McDermott,

2016;Loosemore et al., 2023;Wright, 2015).

Within the UK, the paper’s focus, “new social procurement”, pre-dated but was furthered

by the 2012 Public Services (Social Value) Act (SVA) (HM Government, 2012), which called

upon public authorities to include social value (“economic, social and environmental well-

being”) within the procurement process. The scope of SP is wide in the UK, as outlined in a

“procurement policy note”, PPN 06/20 (Cabinet Office, 2020), that mapped a series of

“themes”: community recovery from COVID-19; tackling economic inequality, fighting

International

Journal of Public

Sector

Management

729

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 10 May 2023

Revised 4 January 2024

27 February 2024

Accepted 20 March 2024

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 37 No. 6, 2024

pp. 729-747

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-05-2023-0145

climate change (also mandated by other policies, of course (Rankl et al., 2023)), equal

opportunity and (health and community) well-being.

“New social procurement”, including in the UK, has required organisations on both the

buy- and supply-side to develop SP-specific capabilities, defined within the resource-based

perspective (Wernerfelt, 1984) as an organisation’s capacity to deploy tangible, intangible

and human resources for a desired end result (Helfat and Lieberman, 2002). Within an

emerging “practice theme”(Loosemore et al., 2023), the literature has indeed identified efforts

at developing such capabilities, including, for example, the emergence of SP “champions”

(Loosemore et al., 2022), mentoring skills (Troje and Gluch, 2020) and knowledge sharing

(Troje and Andersson, 2021).

Such efforts have, however, faced significant headwinds. SP, it is said, challenges

“incumbent institutional logics”related to procurement and supply (Troje and Andersson,

2021, p256), with acceptance of intangible criteria and “horizontal”objectives (Arrowsmith,

2010). This has frequently generated internal resistance in myriad forms on both the buy-side

and supply-side, including a reluctance to provide necessary resources (Loosemore et al.,

2022;Troje, 2023). The result is that the “formalization of sustainable practices is weak ...

practices have not been fully internalized ... [and the] institutionalization of social

procurement has been limited at best”(Troje and Andersson, 2021, p. 256). Loosemore et al.

(2023, p. 4205) describe “an experimental, disconnected and nascent institutional field of

practice with no clear occupational identity, position and organisational knowledge base”.

Whilst such underdevelopment is clearly the predominant state of SP practice, research

undertaken into buy-side practice within UK (specifically English) central and local

government reveals certain public authorities where, echoing Troje and Kadefors (2017) and

Barraket (2020), practice appears more advanced, with authorities having developed

relatively mature SP-related capabilities. In this paper, data on such authorities are presented

to explore the following research question: how might SP-related capabilities be developed

within public authorities? First, the manner in which certain English public authorities have

developed a degree of capability maturity is documented. Second, the deployment of such

maturity is examined via a task within the procurement process –the selection and shaping

of social value “themes”, a key challenge of SP delivery (Burke and King, 2015).

The paper makes an important contribution to the SP literature in a number of respects.

First, the paper analyses buy-side SP capability development from the resource-based

perspective, a perspective that has thus far been largely, although not entirely, overlooked

within SP research (Ewuga and Adesi, 2023;Lou et al., 2023). The approach taken

encompasses both “classical”(Whittington, 2001) and critical concepts (Clark, 2000), allowing

both capability development and constraints to be analysed. Second, it provides rich data on

relatively mature buy-side practice that usefully adds to the emerging “practice theme”

within the literature (Loosemore et al., 2023). Third, it provides guidance to buy-side

practitioners (at a sufficiently generic level) in the hope that the practice identified can be

replicated more widely.

Literature

As mentioned, SP is not new (McCrudden, 2004). However, this paper confines itself to “new

social procurement”(Barraket, 2020, p. 195). Debate exists over the precise definition of SP

(Gidigah et al., 2022). Cartigny and Lord (2017, p. 8) call it: “[Procurement including] a benefit

to a community’s efficacy or an individual’s network of connection and trust in their

community”, whilst Young (Cabinet Office, 2015) focus on the concept of “well-being”.

Murtagh and Brooks (2019, pp. 184–185), meanwhile, argue that SP is a recognition that

“public procurement can achieve more than basic provision of amenities”. Combining these

views, SP is understood here as procurement activity consciously aimed at delivering

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