Literature Review on Effect of Adoption of Green Procurement Practices on Effective Procurement Management in the Public Sector *

Today, the world is grappling with the effects of global warming and the resultant climate change. These effects threaten lives and livelihoods at a gigantic scale. Research indicates that should climate change continue unabated, the live supporting systems on earth will be depleted. These include clean water supplies, clean air and soils able to support agriculture among others. Without these systems, it is difficult to imagine of human or any other life on earth. Environmental conservation and preservation measures have however been shown to halt and reverse global warming. Practices such as reforestation, afforestation, management of water resources, reducing natural resource use, reuse of natural resources, use of green energy and recycling are known to conserve the environment and reverse global warming. Governments, organizations and individuals have a role to play in reducing global warming. Beyond the regulatory role that governments have in environmental conservation, their daily operations can also have a significant impact in checking environmental degradation. Among the most effective operations in environmental conservation is public procurement. Public procurement has the dual effect of bringing environmentally friendly inputs in to the public production process as well as encouraging organizations and individuals in their supply chain to adopt green. This is then cascaded down by the suppliers, compounding the green effect in the economy. The challenge is weather by adopting green procurement practices; public institutions would compromise effective procurement management. Important considerations such as cost effectiveness, timely availability of supplies, high quality inputs among others might be effected by green procurement. In many countries, especially in the developing countries, such considerations take precedence over environmental conservation. It is therefore important to consider the effect of adopting green on these considerations of effective procurement. Several theories form the basis for this review. These include the stakeholder theory, the natural resource base theory, the economic approach theory, the innovation theory, the contingency approach theory and the institutional sociology theory. This paper reviews literature on the subject and establishes that adoption of green procurement has an effect on indicators such as cost, quality and lead time, which are all key in procurement management. The effect is either positive or negative in the short and long run. This is important because indicators that enable managers to effectively run the procurement function motivate them to adopt green while those that do not hinder them. In absence of policy directions on green procurement, it becomes impractical for the managers to adopt green, especially when it negatively affects some indicators of procurement management.