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Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.

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Public bodies are being encouraged to procure sustainably, to reduce their social and environmental footprint and in order to stimulate sustainability in the private sector. However, little is known about how public sector organisations internationally are responding to this encouragement or of the conditions that are most conducive to sustainable procurement (SP). The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps in our knowledge so as to inform policy development at the government and organisational levels.

The authors report the findings of a survey of SP practices within a sample of over 280 public procurement practitioners from 20 countries and with collective responsibility for expenditure totalling $45bn p.a.

The authors' analysis shows that some SP practices are evident in public sector procurement practice and that the extent and nature of SP practices varies significantly across regions. In addition, the authors highlight the main facilitators of, and barriers to, engagement with SP and investigate their importance for engagement with particular dimensions of SP.

Survey respondents are volunteers and may to some degree be more interested in, or engaged with, SP than other public sector organisations. The analysis is cross‐sectional and therefore provides only a snapshot of SP practice in the public sector organisations studied.

The paper identifies how policy and practice in SP vary across regions, providing practical insights into whether and how government policies are being implemented around the world.

The paper provides the first systematic and comprehensive insight into how public bodies are implementing SP internationally and of the major situational factors that are shaping engagement with SP. The authors evaluate the current effectiveness of policy initiatives regarding SP and highlight the organisational catalysts and inhibitors of greater involvement in SP.

This paper aims to explore the effect of business strategy on socially responsible supply chain management (SR‐SCM).

This study draws on data from 178 UK‐based companies, and 340 buyer‐supplier relationships. A novel data collection approach is used, which minimizes social desirability and common methods bias, to capture socially responsible supply chain management. The data are analysed through a set of OLS regressions.

Business strategies significantly influence socially responsible supply chain management. Low‐cost producers largely neglect their social responsibilities in the supply chain. In contrast, firms pursuing differentiation strategies are considerably more engaged with these issues, partly because they have better supply chain processes.

Practitioners should carefully consider the fit between strategic position and level of engagement with SR‐SCM, since our results emphasise the relationship between SR‐SCM and business strategy. Proactive engagement with SR‐SCM, however, also implies sound supply chain processes, which must also be aligned with business strategy. Policy‐makers should consider the low engagement with SR‐SCM of low‐cost producers and the implications for SR‐SCM in cost sensitive and competitive global markets.

This is the first systematic cross‐sectional study of the relationship between business strategy and socially responsible supply chain management (SR‐SCM). These results suggest that there is a clear relationship between the strategic position of the firm and their SR‐SCM practices. These results contribute to the on‐going debate on relationships between strategy and supply chain management, and the emerging debate on the relationships between strategy and SR‐SCM.

This paper presents the results of a survey of perceptions on sustainable procurement (SP) in the United Nations (UN). It is the first of its kind to systematically analyse the issue of SP in the UN system. While the UN has a tremendous opportunity to support their objective of sustainable development through SP practices, significant obstacles still block the full implementation of this goal. The purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers to implementing SP practices in the UN system. Based on an online survey that yielded 282 responses, we identified a framework of SP measures and barriers, and conducted a regression analysis to identify underlying correlations. We find significant correlation between good SP practices and low demand, performance measurement and tool barriers.

This study aims to investigate sustainable procurement in the UK public sector.

Sustainable procurement is investigated using a questionnaire that draws on established scales for “purchasing social responsibility”. The survey was administered across the UK public sector, and 106 responses were received from procurement officers.

Analysis of quantitative and qualitative survey data reveal there is significant variation across public sector agencies in the nature of sustainable procurement practice. Local authorities have a particularly strong emphasis on buying from local and small suppliers relative to other sectors, health looks generally lower in many categories, and education appears to have something of an emphasis on environmental aspects of sustainable procurement. Cost has been found to be the leading barrier to sustainable procurement, and top management support the leading facilitator.

There is likely to be selection bias in the sample, with those practitioners engaging in the sustainability agenda being more likely to have responded to the questionnaire. The United Kingdom government has an objective amongst the leaders in Europe on sustainable procurement by 2009, and early signs are encouraging that progress towards this goal is underway.

This paper provides the first survey of sustainable procurement practices across the UK public sector. It also provides a conceptual framework of influences upon the propensity to engage in sustainable procurement practice.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of environmental management practices in the UK and discuss managerial responses to environmental issues in comparison with earlier research.

A telephone interview survey approach is adopted encompassing both quantitative and qualitative open‐ended questions with a sample of 167 UK companies stratified by firm size and industry sector.

The majority of firms are undertaking efforts to reduce their environmental impacts, yet economic considerations such as cost and risk reductions and achieving compliance with environmental legislation dominate firms' environmental behaviour. Especially small and medium‐sized firms appear to rely on relatively short‐term planning horizons, which ultimately prevent them from becoming more proactive in their environmental outlook. Comparison with earlier studies suggests that the overall behaviour of firms towards environmental issues remains reactive and economically‐oriented.

Despite the growing salience of many environmental challenges, businesses fail to employ more proactive environmental strategies, suggesting that more has to be done at policy level to stimulate the incentives involved with adopting such an approach.

By using a mixed methods approach the paper aims to overcome problems of respondent identification and social desirability bias.