It is not easy being green: increasing sustainable public procurement behaviour

To achieve greater sustainability, governments need to continuously adapt their purchasing activities to innovations in the market. Sustainable procurement is a decision-making process in which the decisions of procurers determine if the full potential of sustainable procurement is used. The decisions and thus behaviour of procurers are therefore crucial for the successfulness of sustainable procurement. According to organizational theory, commitment to change could influence this behaviour. Hence, in the study, we examined if commitment to implement sustainable procurement increases sustainable procurement behaviour by Dutch public procurers and what determines this commitment to implement sustainable procurement are. Our study shows first that both affective commitment to implement sustainable procurement and procedural justice increase sustainable procurement behaviour. In addition, the results show that commitment to change acts as a mechanismbetween fitwith vision, ecological sustainability attitude, procedural justice and sustainable procurement behaviour

What’s in it for others? The relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change among youth care professionals

This study assesses the relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change among youth care professionals. We draw on person–environment fit theory to propose that this relationship is conditional on employees’ perceived meaningfulness of the change for society and clients. Our results confirm the expected positive relationship between prosocial motivation and commitment to change. Our analysis suggests that the moderating relationship between prosocial motivation, client meaningfulness and commitment to change should be understood as a substitutive relationship: both prosocial motivation and client meaningfulness are sufficient conditions, but the presence of both is not a necessary condition for commitment to change

Sustainable Procurement in Practice: Explaining the Degree of Sustainable Procurement from an Organisational Perspective

Sustainable procurement is often used to reduce negative environmental impacts related to production and consumption. Several studies in the sustainable procurement literature have identified potential drivers of and barriers to sustainable procurement, which are often organisational in nature. Using an organisational perspective, this paper examines if and how three organisational factors – top management support, expertise and commitment – influence the degree of sustainable procurement in procurement projects in the Dutch national government. The article concludes that both organizational factors (especially commitment) and the actions of individual actors are important

The management of change in public organisations: A literature review

This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organisations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analyzed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their employed methods and theory. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organisations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in-depth empirical and comparative studies on c

Changing the Rotterdam-Rijnmond regional fire service: A multi-dimensional approach for analysing strategies of change

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify critical success factors for the management of complex change processes in fire service organizations and to apply these in a case study of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides review of literature on organizational change, case study of the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service supported by the analysis of policy documents and 30 semi-structured interviews with key persons. Findings: Combining different theoretical approaches helps to get a more complete picture of important issues and dilemma’s in the management of change processes – which is a first step in the successful implementation of changes – whereas other approaches tend to emphasize only some and overlook others. Applied in a case study, this approach revealed serious weaknesses in the management of change within the Rotterdam-Rijnmond fire service and offered practical guides for solutions. Originality/value: This paper combines insights from different theoretical approaches into a more integrated perspective that aims to be helpful as a practical tool for designing and implementing complex changes in fire service organizations

The influence of Myers-Briggs type indicator profiles on team development processes: an empirical study in the manufacturing industry

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one of the most common personality assessments and a frequently used instrument for team development. However, in relation to team development processes, there is little research and literature on the role of personality in general and the usefulness of MBTI in particular. This article starts with a review of the MBTI and explores the relationship between MBTI profiles and team processes using a sample of 1,630 people working in 156 teams in a Swedish industrial organization. The results show that only a small number of MBTI personality profiles have a significant relationship with team processes. Overall, the composition of teams in terms of MBTI profiles does not seem to predict team development very well. Findings suggest that the MBTI may be used as an instrument for personal development and as a vehicle for group members to gain a better understanding of each othe