Increasing the environmental and social sustainability in corporate purchasing: Practices and tools

Sammanfattning: Despite efforts to stimulate the dissemination of green purchasing practices, their uptake in business and industry has so far proven limited. Reasons for the limited progress remain largely unclear. One factor explored in this thesis, is the role of information in the operationalization and dissemination of green purchasing in organizations and supply chains. The importance of knowledge and information for the dissemination and operational possibility of green purchasing has until now remained under-examined in both academic and practitioner-based literature. The research presented in this thesis concentrates on the perspective of the purchasers. The research concludes that that green purchasing practices in private sector organizations in Sweden remain limited, and mainly focus products of strategic importance. The most common approach in applying environmental and social requirements is the supplier performance based approach. Few purchasers use, and are aware of, the range of information tools that are currently available. The obstacles among purchasing managers to use information tools in green purchasing seem to vary with the type of purchasing situation.