In Australia, a new feature of public policy is the requirement by governments that large-scale infrastructure projects integrate social procurement practices that alter the traditional focus on balancing price and quality. Social procurement has been gradually developing in practice, but the academic literature has not kept pace. Although past research has identified some of the barriers affecting social procurement implementation in the construction industry, the nature of the barriers impeding its proliferation has not to date been systematically reviewed. This paper undertakes a review of the social procurement literature published from January 2012 to 30 June 2022, with 49 papers chosen under selective criteria. This critical review employs the “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) technique to retrieve secondary data on social procurement from available peer-reviewed academic papers through three databases (Scopus, EBSCOhost, Web of Science). The literature analysis focuses on three themes: (1) barriers; (2) enablers; and (3) strategies to overcome the barriers. The paper finds that social procurement as a field of practice is evolving and expanding, but its role in contributing to social value creation remains an under-theorised concept. Recommendations for practice and future research are identified, including the need to measure the real-world impacts of policy.

Although social procurement is viewed as an important part of social value creation, barriers to its implementation have resulted in a failure to realise the full societal benefits it was designed to achieve. As a key area of activity for government procurement projects, the construction and transportation industries have a big role to play in contributing positively to societal outcomes. While prior studies have identified barriers from specific cohorts, no prior study has approached this from the perspective of the key stakeholders throughout the social procurement ecosystem within the construction and transport industries. To address this gap in social procurement research, interviews and a focus group totalling 42 participants were undertaken. Participants ranged from those implementing policy (government representatives), tendering for contracts (tier one companies) and providing specialised social procurement services (social enterprises), along with key intermediary support bodies. Results indicate that barriers exist throughout the entire social procurement ecosystem and highlight the need to develop an enhanced social procurement ecosystem capable of maximising the societal benefit that arises from social procurement. These findings provide a set of strategies for the key stakeholders in the ecosystem to consider adopting to improve social procurement outcomes.

This study aims to investigate the mechanisms by which firms’ strategic entrepreneurship (SE) impacts the achievement of their collaborative advantage (CA) for sustainable supply chain innovation. It includes a comprehensive analysis of the direct effect of SE on CA, the contingent effects of organizational structure and collaborative networks on this impact and the interaction effect of exploration and exploitation strategies under SE. An integrated conceptual model is proposed and the hypotheses are tested by structural equation modeling (SEM) using survey data from 432 manufacturing firms in China. The results confirm the positive impact of SE on CA, which is moderated differently by decentralized, formalized and specialized organizational structures. Meanwhile, vertical and horizontal collaborations lead to different types of advantages, and firms need to balance exploration and exploitation strategies across functional domains to achieve strategic ambidexterity, which further improves CA and facilitates sustainable supply chain innovation. Theoretically, this study is original in applying SE to the collaborative advantage in a supply chain context, while taking into account the high complexity of supply chain collaboration with a contingency approach. Practically, this study provides important managerial implications and specific recommendations for different firms to achieve sustainability in supply chain collaboration and innovation.

Developments in supply chain management (SCM) have dramatically increased within the past few years to cover a wide range of cross-disciplinary topics. With the significant developments in both technologies and business environments, a service system is proposed to work optimally under complex, globalised supply chain environments. Following the studies on SCM theories, this research develops a robust enterprise supply chain services framework taking into account of risk management in firm governance. Consequently, a robust supply chain services system (RSCSS) was built by combining optimisation modelling with the six-core management service modules of knowledge, data, task, information, communication and risk. In this system, the robust optimisation method was used to manage uncertainties. Importantly, by integrating the six-core management services modules with robust optimisation, this RSCSS can assist in supporting optimal and stable operations in a wide range of enterprises, especially for small and medium enterprises running global businesses dynamically and economically.

Social procurement can attain particular traction when governments leverage large-scale infrastructure programmes to mandate the procurement of goods and services from categories of people in society that have historically be disadvantaged. However, frictions can arise within a system of regulation when operational choices in the structural design of a regulatory regime are not well matched with the nature of the social opportunity being addressed. In 2018, the Australian State of Victoria introduced a Social Procurement Framework, intending to create economic and employment opportunities for historically disadvantaged groups. Applying Sheehy and Feaver’s theory of regulatory coherence, and taking into account findings from interviews with stakeholders, this article assesses the coherence of the Australian State of Victoria’s social procurement regulatory regime, as it applied from 2018 to 2023. This article explains Victoria’s framework, makes recommendations for its improvement, and, drawing upon pertinent theoretical perspectives, extends the regulatory coherence debate into the domain of social procurement.