Sustainable Procurement Initiative
Sustainable Procurement Initiatives
About the Initiative
The global society is increasingly engaged in endeavors to transition into a greener future, and this builds pressure on companies in terms of playing an active role in achieving the new ambitious environmental objectives.
However, as the environmental impact of a company reaches far outside its own local production, reducing this impact is a complex and challenging task that involves the active participation of many supply chain actors. Specifically, the purchasing and supply management function plays a fundamental role in dealing with the environmental impact in the supply network. Our research focuses on exploring, in practice:
How purchasing and supply management processes are designed and practiced to transition the supply network to higher levels of environmental sustainability.
Our focus is dual as we are interested in understanding the practices and decision-making that take place inside the buying organization, but also in how the purchasing and supply management function engages with and are dependent on suppliers to push the green agenda upstream in the supply network.
Our research is mainly qualitative and case-based and we collaborate with many different companies.
Our main objective is to develop and publish new research-based knowledge of a high international standard. In order to do so we engage with and help develop a community of companies interested in sharing knowledge and data on their sustainable procurement practices. We also involve master thesis students in our work and research and disseminate our results in our teaching.
Research Research Themes
Our research is concerned with how purchasing and supply management processes are designed and unfolded in practice with the ambition to transition the supply network to higher levels of environmental sustainability. The current research themes inside this scope are:
- Measurement and reporting of the supply networks’ sustainability impacts
- Supplier selection and evaluation and sustainability
- Buyer-supplier relationships and environmental sustainability
- Sourcing of eco-innovations from suppliers
- Development of circular procurement
- Maturity in sustainable procurement practices
- Justice in sustainable procurement practices
- Obstacles and paradoxes in implementing sustainable procurement practices
- Developing sustainable procurement capabilities
- Understanding the unique practices and challenges in transitioning to sustainable procurement in different industrial contexts (e.g. Financial service)
Activities
Members of the SPI, organize and participate in a number of conferences and workshops both at CBS and internationally.
Workshops with case companies
We organize and facilitate events between the research team and case companies. The purpose is to disseminate research findings, identify research opportunities, and facilitate knowledge sharing among the participating companies. Currently, we are running on average two workshops per year.
Seminars with Master thesis students
We facilitate a network of master thesis students that writes their final master thesis project in close collaboration with researchers from the strategic SPI-initiative. The students develop their research-based master thesis by exploring one of the central themes in the research initiative. The students are often engaged in one or more of the case companies that participate in the initiative. In the previous two years, 28 master thesis students have been collaborating with the research initiative.
Presenting our research at research conferences
To develop our research ideas further we engage with the international research community. One of the activities is to present our work at international research conferences.
Participants
Kim Sundtoft Hald - Professor with Special responsibilities (Organizer)
Britta Gammelgaard – Professor
Christian Hendriksen – Assistant Professor
Philip Beske-Janssen - Assistant Professor
Sofia Wiik – PhD Fellow
Thomas Johnsen – Visiting Professor
Contact Information
If you would like to learn more about the Sustainable Procurement Initiative (SPI), please contact Kim Sundtoft Hald at ksh.om@cbs.dk. We welcome the opportunity to discuss our research and to collaborate with researchers and companies to advance and disseminate knowledge about sustainable procurement practices.