Book review
| Published date | 04 June 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-06-2018-007 |
| Date | 04 June 2018 |
| Pages | 182-186 |
| Author | Kouliga Koala,Joshua Steinfeld |
| Subject Matter | Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management,Government,Economics,Public finance/economics,Taxation/public revenue |
Book review
Social Procurement and New Public Governance
by Jo Barraket, Robyn Keast and Craig Furneaux
(Eds)
Routledge, New York
2016
148 p.
$110.00
hardcover
ISBN 978 0 415 85855 7
Review DOI 10.1108/JOPP-06-2018-007
What is the importance of social procurement in the twenty-first century and how is it
practiced in the context of New Public Governance(NPG)? In Social Procurement and NPG,
Barraket et al. (2016) articulatethat social procurement is a powerful policy to solvemany of
the problems that governments, private businesses, and international organizations face
today. The reason social procurement itself is an effective approach is because of the
prevalence of NPG. This mode of governance currently in place requires actors and
institutions from various sectors to interactand network for greater public value and social
value. The rise of NPG requires a work-together between the public sector, the private
sector, and the third sector or the sector of volunteer and nonprofit organizations. Thus,
NPG presents itself as a system of carefully collected actors, rules, and resources of all
sectors of society to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. The new
governance features and the institutional structures they create lay a suitable groundwork
for the practice of social procurement. It isin this context that social procurement becomes
the most desirable tool to address social problems that government bureaucracy and New
Public Management (NPM)practices have not been able to address (Pollitt, 1993;Hood, 1998
for issues of NPM).
Barraket et al. (2016) start off by first providing historical accounts of the transition of
social procurement from its past rootsto its contemporary development by mainly focusing
on five countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand. In the twelth to
sixteenth centuries, the practiceconsisted of procuring for social outcomes to solve problems
related to industrial revolutions, land foreclosures, or social upheavals. During that period,
services were provided by philanthropic movements to the people in need. Entering the
nineteenth and into the twentieth century, procurement was used as a more deliberate
mechanism to address growing policy objectives such as unemployment and poor
workplace practices which threatened social cohesion (Barraket et al.,2016, p. 35).
Governments realizedthe need to procure social support commoditiesfrom the not-for-profit
sector, eventually revealing the need for the welfare state and its later establishment
(Barraket et al.,2016, p. 35). The 1960s saw the rise of new social movements leading to the
adoption of affirmative actionpolicies in countries such as the USA which started to use set-
asides bids for minority businesses ingovernment contracting (Barraket et al.,2016, p. 35).
JOPP
18,2
182
Journalof Public Procurement
Vol.18 No. 2, 2018
pp. 182-186
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1535-0118
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