THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE REGULATION OF THE ECONOMY

Аннотация

In the context of climate change as a grand challenge, this article offers insights on market shaping from research on industrial networks and institutional work to the market practice perspective. The purpose of the study is to conceptually integrate policy practices and market practices aimed at coping with climate change using public procurement as a case. We draw upon a conceptual model distinguishing three separate market practice categories: market exchange, market representation, and market normalizing. In expanding the model with policy actors deliberate market shaping activities, we locate institutional work as part of the larger set of normalizing practices. Based on the extended model, we find two concepts worthy to be at the core of the analysis: translation within and between market practice categories, and temporality attributes of institutional work and market actor innovations. In an empirical study, reflecting an on- going abductive research process on market shaping, the article scrutinizes how government institutional work in Sweden can make public procurement contribute to innovations related to market practices. Based on a study of government documents, we formulate three propositions, on translation, temporality and market representation. The study suggests that temporality dimensions in institutional work to develop policy innovations and translation of the innovations to exchange practices affect the intended effects on procurement behavior. It also shows that policy innovations performed by institutional work might be in conflict with established norms to which actors might continue to adhere, requiring added translation efforts, and delaying climate mitigating effects. Based on the empirical observations, the article argues that value chains, as a model for market representation, may have the performative power to shape and reshape markets. “THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE ORGANIZATION OF PUBLIC PROCUREMENT IN THE REGULATION OF THE ECONOMY” P age 261 | 4 KEYWORDS: Market practices Institutional work Innovation Climate mitigating Public procurement Value chains INTRODUCTION restrictions on the interactions between buyer and seller, and on the development of Climate change presents a grand challenge, relationships over time. Literature on public that by its very nature, requires “coordinated procurement and innovation refers to the and sustained effort from multiple and diverse opposing logics of the micro economic and the stakeholders and a clearly articulated problem network representation of markets. The or goal.” The analytical facets of grand importance of interaction over time in a challenges are complex, uncertain and network context has, for many years, been characterized by evaluative multiplicity. The widely understood in practice, as witnessed by Paris Climate Treaty of 2015 provides research on purchasing in the private. governments and stakeholders with an However, in the public sector, value creation articulated goal: drastically reduce fossil based on interactions and relationships within emissions in two to three decades to keep networks has neither been fully recognized global warming well below two degrees, as nor, until recently, legitimized in formal compared to the pre-industrial era. To achieve procedure. As revealed in the empirical transformative changes, innovations across section, government institutional work is production and consumption processes are currently directed towards a change in arguably indispensable. Climate mitigation exchange practices, in an effort to make it calls for coordinated activities between actors closer in practice to the behavior seen in involved in government policy, and those industrial markets in general. Axelsson and involved in markets. Innovations performed by Torvatn (2017) argue that even if recent market actors need to be impelled by changes in procurement laws are less government initiatives and actions, which restrictive on interaction between seller and must also be of an innovative nature. To grasp buyer, a micro economic based view on the the climate mitigating process, knowledge role of competition for effective procurement about interdependencies between policy and practice is still dominant. Changes in formal market practices is essential (Scherer & rules might not affect behavior in the short Palazzo, 2011). run, due to a lack of competence and Institutional work for public procurement to experience with the new tender procedures promote climate innovation on the buyer side, and to uncertainty regarding norms concerning development of In this section we illustrate how recent long-term relationships (Torvatn & De Boer, literature on public procurement refers to 2017). In a decentralized governance system, market practice categories and to institutional such as the Swedish model, where a great deal work to promote innovation. Formal and of decisionmaking power is vested at the informal rules for public procurement