Norm-critical innovation for inclusion of minority-owned suppliers in public procurement

Purpose and goal

Supplier diversity is being practiced mainly under the term `social hänsyn´. Despite its benefits, social hänsyn has yet to maintain its position well. Suppliers are substantially unaware of it and procurers do not trust social hänsyn yet, but started to practice it. Since social hänsyn is practiced primarily in bigger cities, focus has been on recruitment rather than choosing minority suppliers. Recruits have been mostly young adults and long-time unemployed people as opposed to immigrant women. A panel consists of stakeholders created to test social hänsyn.

Results and expected effects

There are immigrant women-owned suppliers who need education about public procurement, believe in systematic discrimination, and suffer from lack of confidence. Procurers are not totally agreed with applying social hänsyn since it is huge, unclear, and difficult to implement. A number of procurers believe that it might sacrifice quality. An increase in procurement along with social hänsyn as well as solving suppliers´ issues breaks this norm.

Approach and implementation

In a 10 month period, two rounds of face-to-face and telephone interviews were conducted. The first round was for understanding the target group using preliminary questionnaire of study and the second round contained a concluding questionnaire. In the first round, 6 procurers, 6 suppliers, and 11 other stakeholders were interviewed. In second round, 11 suppliers, 4 procurers and 3 researchers were interviewed. Open ended questions were used and bias decreased using different techniques. Also, more than 20 tenders were read and analyzed.