A look back at how this Social Procurement Community of Practice was created.
Pioneering research and stakeholders
This national Community of Practice was established in 2020. Our research at that time – funded by the Australian Research Council, Multiplex Construction Ltd, HeyDay Group, yourtown and Blacktown City Council – showed how social procurement in the construction industry could help alleviate Australia’s stubborn rates of high youth unemployment and under-employment.
This built on our previous research which showed how applying social procurement in the construction industry could also help to address social disadvantage suffered by many other groups such as people with a disability, Indigenous peoples, refugees, migrants, homeless, youth at risk, ex-offenders and women in highly masculinised industries like construction. These problems have proved resistant to traditional government interventions.
Challenges and fears of institutional instability
However, research in Australia and overseas shows that social procurement is very challenging to implement into the construction industry.
This is because social procurement throws the construction industry into a state of ‘institutional instability’ by challenging existing notions of value, procurement processes and supply chain relationships.
All too often the people targeted are seen as a risk rather than an asset to the industry.
A disconnected yet passionate network
As part of our research, we serendipitously discovered a small, disconnected but incredibly diverse group of passionate and talented people performing a wide variety of different social procurement-related roles. They often did this voluntarily and on top of their normal duties and were relying heavily on their creative ability to ‘make-do’ with existing resources at hand to introduce new social innovations into their organisations and supply chains.
These people had many common attributes and they were all fighting to implement social procurement into a hardnosed, pressured and lean industry with many formal and informal institutional barriers to implementation.
However, this groups was largely disconnected and there was very little sharing, guidance, support or research to guide their experimental practices.
So this Social Procurement Community of Practice was born!
Growth and global collaboration
Since 2020, our Community of Practice has grown to include social procurement and social value thought leaders from across Australia, Canada and the UK.