Details
Year: 2014
Published in: Social Traders
Cited as: Bonwick, M., and M. Daniels. “Corporate social procurement in Australia: business creating social value.” Social Traders, Melbourne, Australia (2014).
Subject
Social Procurement, Australia
Abstract
Social procurement is the use of procurement to generate social benefits beyond the products and services required. As well as creating commercial efficiencies and new value streams – it also creates jobs and opportunities for people who may have struggled to find work, it reinvigorates depressed or marginalised communities and it can drive better business outcomes.
In unlocking government and corporate procurement budgets, social procurement has the potential
to reduce disadvantage and increase workforce participation in Australia. These are big aspirations, that can only be achieved if there is a will amongst the biggest buyers to support social procurement.
Social Traders commissioned this research to better understand the way in which corporate Australia
is participating in social procurement and what its aspirations are, with a specific focus on how goods and services are procured from social enterprises.
David Thodey, CEO, Telstra
The key objectives of this research were to:
» understand the extent of social procurement activity
» identify partnership models, agreements and lessons learned from the market.
» understand the impediments to social procurement
» identify how social procurement can increase the demand and market for social enterprise products and services.
The research included a detailed literature review, followed by a survey of 31 businesses operating
in Australia, with a market capitalisation of $221 billion. The work then focused on five of the survey respondents to formulate more detailed case studies of best practice corporate social procurement. The report goes on to make recommendations on how social procurement can be supported to grow in scale and impact in Australia.
