This paper aims to examine how public procurement organisations operationalise human rights due diligence (HRDD) within socially responsible public procurement (SRPP) and how intermediaries enable and shape that practice.
The study uses a mixed-methods design combining a purposefully sampled European survey of public procurement professionals (N = 75, respondents with HRDD knowledge) with ten semi-structured interviews. The survey results show how HRDD practices in SRPP are implemented and the challenges faced. Interview data explain underlying capacity, risk and organisational dynamics.
HRDD integration appears to be fragmented across organisations, countries and contracts represented in our study. Organisations rely on intermediaries to build internal support and capacity and to assist in concrete procurement actions. Intermediary support is concentrated pre-award, leaving post-award contract management underdeveloped. This reinforces the tendency to treat the SRPP as a pre-award issue rather than as a continuous process.
Policy and organisational strategies lack attention to intermediary infrastructures for contract management, strengthening collective monitoring and leveraging mechanisms to move beyond clause-writing toward sustained SRPP practices.
The paper advances SRPP research by introducing a capacity-risk-intermediary lens that highlights how capacity constraints and risk perceptions jointly produce reliance on intermediaries, who, in turn, shape the depth and form of HRDD integration.
