Sustainable procurement strategies for competitive advantage: an empirical study

Procurement plays a key role in sustainability as policies and practices need to extend beyond organisations’ boundaries to incorporate their whole supply chains. There is, however, a paucity of empirical research on sustainable forms of procurement initiatives currently being implemented in the UK construction sector to improve competitiveness – which is the core driver of this paper. In order to achieve this aim, a mixed research methodological approach was adopted to collect and analyse data. The findings are based primarily on quantitative data obtained from 53 completed postal questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 17 professionals from 12 UK construction organisations. As revealed by this study, sustainable procurement is becoming increasingly important in the UK construction sector. The paper concludes that the process of integrating sustainable procurement initiatives into existing business models is often a complex issue. Therefore, there is an urgent need to explore the drivers and impediments associated with the successful integration of sustainable procurement initiatives into existing construction business models. It is also suggested that there is a need for cross-sector collaboration to capture and share best and worst practices relating to sustainable procurement strategies.