Date: 7th of December 2021
Time: 10:35am to 12:00pm
Venue: Storey Hall, RMIT
Session Type: Panel
Participants: Sue Boyce (AbilityWorks), Dr Warren Staples (University of Melbourne), Paul Ashby (Aurecon, waiting for his confirmation), Dr Joanne Meehan (University of Liverpool, UK) and Sebastian Conley (Transurban)

The panel will be moderated by Dr Kevin Argus (RMIT) and Dr. Natalya Turkina.

 Dr Jo Meehan

Senior Lecturer in Strategic Procurement
University of Liverpool Management School

Prior to joining academia, Jo had a long career with ICI working in numerous purchasing and commercial roles, and her research strives to be practical and impactful. Jo’s current research centres on modern slavery, social value, sustainable supply chains, and corporate power. Jo’s work has been at the forefront of developing the concept of value-based procurement for over ten years and her research has won numerous international awards for its contribution to the procurement field. She is a regular public speaker on responsible business. She is extensively published in world-leading academic journals and in the professional press and has been referenced by the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Environment Programme, the UK’s National Health System, the UK Government’s Crown Commercial Service, and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, as well as numerous corporate organisations. Jo is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and champions the journal’s ’business-not-as-usual’ research.

Topic: “Beyond ‘Box-Ticking’: Institutional Challenges and Opportunities for Australian Social Procurement”.

Synopsis: The COVID-19 crisis has significantly hit Australia, bringing in the first economic recession since the 1990s along high un- and under-employment rates, especially amongst the vulnerable, disadvantaged, or marginalised groups of people (e.g., women and youth at risk, refugees and migrants, people with disabilities, indigenous people). To recover from this crisis, the Victorian Government has prioritised social procurement as a promising strategy for creating meaningful long-term employment. Social procurement is a framework for organisations to use their buying power to generate social value for local communities above and beyond the economic value of goods or services being purchased. This can be achieved via direct procurement from social enterprises or by including social impact or employment assessment in the tender requirements. However, Australian firms tend to take a short-term ‘box-ticking’ approach to social procurement by merely complying to minimum contractual requirements instead of creating meaningful long-term business and employment opportunities in the local communities. During this Panel discussion, we will discuss what institutional (i.e., political, cultural, financial) challenges inform such a ‘box-ticking’ approach and what institutional opportunities lie ahead of Australian social procurement.