FW-HTF-P: Envisioning Public Procurement for a Sustainable Future

美国公共部门是全球最大的单一市场，占美国国内生产总值的24%。因此，公共部门的决策在影响环境、社会和经济结果的可持续性方面发挥着重要作用。公共部门还创造了巨大的机会，利用其购买力推动可持续的公共采购和总体可持续性。然而，在地方一级，只有四分之一的美国城市采用了可持续的公共采购，其中只有大约一半的城市表明他们的努力取得了成功。影响可持续公共采购成功的一个关键因素是采购经理在多大程度上采用现有的、新兴的和未来的数字技术来获取和整合准确的数据到他们当前的采购流程中，并了解可持续性如何影响他们的采购决策。这些技术在支持决策、吸引利益相关者参与、在多层供应链中收集信息以及监测和衡量实现可持续发展目标的进展方面发挥着关键作用。即便如此，将数字技术整合到公共采购中以推进可持续发展目标仍然是一个未知领域。该规划项目将定义复杂的数字技术如何改变公共采购以改善可持续性成果并提供建议。调查结果将与管理人员相关，为采购人员在其未来角色中需要的培训和教育提供见解。调查结果还将为公共采购和更广泛的公共政策重点提供信息和改进，以利用公共部门的巨大购买力来推进更广泛的可持续性目标。本研究的重点是公共采购经理如何利用构成数字生态系统的现有、新兴和未来技术来实现其可持续性目标。它开始揭示公共组织对可持续性的看法，以及他们目前在多大程度上平衡了经济、环境和社会问题。多元化的团队将整合不同的理论方法，以明确新兴技术对采购过程造成的破坏，以及这些技术如何重新定义未来PP经理的技能。它通过从技术开发人员、公共组织领导者和采购经理那里收集定性数据来确定需要进一步发展的初始理论结构，并导致高影响、基础研究问题和可测试的研究假设，这些假设锚定在趋同理论中。本研究将：(1)确定公共采购的新兴社会技术景观，并评估支持和授权管理人员所需的因素；(2)评估将可持续发展目标纳入采购的机会/障碍。这两个因素对公共采购经理未来的工作都有重要的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The United States (U.S.) public sector constitutes the single largest marketplace across the globe, accounting for 24% of U.S. GDP. Therefore, the decisions of the public sector play a significant role in sustainability, which affects environmental, social, and economic outcomes. The public sector also creates enormous opportunities to leverage its purchasing power to advance sustainable public procurement and sustainability in general. However, at the local level, only one-quarter of U.S. cities have adopted sustainable public procurement, and of these, only about half indicate that their efforts have been successful. A critical factor affecting sustainable public procurement success is the extent to which procurement managers adopt existing, emerging, and future digital technologies to acquire and integrate accurate data into their current procurement processes, and to understand how sustainability impacts of their purchase decisions. These technologies play a pivotal role for supporting decision making, engaging stakeholders, gathering information in multi-tier supply chains, and monitoring and measuring progress towards achieving sustainability goals. Even so, the integration of digital technologies into public procurement to advance sustainability objectives remains uncharted territory. This planning project will define and provide recommendations on how complex digital technologies can transform public procurement to improve sustainability outcomes. The findings will be relevant to managers by providing insights on the training and education procurement workers will need in their future roles. The findings will also inform and improve public procurement and the broader public policy emphasis to leverage the massive purchasing power of the public sector to advance broader sustainability goals.This research focuses on how public procurement managers can leverage existing, emerging, and future technologies that comprise the digital ecosystem to achieve their sustainability goals. It begins to uncover public organizations’ perception of sustainability and the extent to which they currently balance economic, environmental, and social concerns. The diverse team will integrate different theoretical approaches to offer clarity around the disruptions created by emerging technologies to the procurement process, and how these technologies are likely to redefine the skillset of future PP managers. It does so by collecting qualitative data from technology developers, leaders of public organizations, and procurement managers to identify the initial theoretical constructs needing further development and leading to high-impact, fundamental research questions and testable research hypotheses that are anchored in convergence theories. This research will: (1) identify the emerging socio-technological landscape of public procurement and assess the factors needed to support and empower managers; and, (2) assess the opportunities/barriers for integrating sustainability objectives into procurement. Both factors have significant implications to the future work of public procurement managers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.