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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0, Open
Journal article
Champions of Social Procurement in the Australian Construction Industry: Evolving Roles and Motivations
Buildings, Vol.11(12), pp.1-18
11/12/2021
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Abstract
There has been a recent proliferation of social procurement policies in Australia that target the construction industry. This is mirrored in many other countries, and the nascent research in this area shows that these policies are being implemented by an emerging group of largely undefined professionals who are often forced to create their own roles in institutional vacuums with little organisational legitimacy and support. By mobilising theories of how organisational champions diffuse innovations in other fields of practice, this paper contributes new insights into the evolving nature of these newly emerging roles and the motivations which drive these professionals to overcome the institutional inertia they invariably face. The results of semi-structured interviews, with fifteen social procurement champions working in the Australian construction industry, indicate that social procurement champions come from a wide range of professional backgrounds and bring diverse social capital to their roles. Linked by a shared sense of social consciousness, these champions challenge traditional institutional norms, practices, supply chain relationships, and traditional narratives about the concepts of value in construction. We conclude that, until normative standards develop around social procurement in the construction industry, its successful implementation will depend on external institutional pressures and the practical demonstration of what is possible in practice within the performative constraints of traditional project objectives.
Details
- Title
- Champions of Social Procurement in the Australian Construction Industry: Evolving Roles and Motivations
- Creators
- Martin Loosemore - University of Technology SydneyRobyn Keast - Southern Cross UniversityJo Barraket - Swinburne University of TechnologyGeorge Denny-Smith - University of New South Wales
- Publication Details
- Buildings, Vol.11(12), pp.1-18
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Grant note
- This research was funded by the Australian Research Council, grant number LP170100670.
- Identifiers
- 991012988296602368
- Copyright
- © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Academic Unit
- Management; Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article