Accounting for societal interests in public procurement – a study of valuation work

• Over the years public procurement has developed from an executive management function aimed at fulfilling internal demands for works, supplies, or services to a policy instrument that can create societal value (Grandia 2018). Policy makers across Europe increasingly promote public procurement as a key tool of governance to meet pressing societal challenges and create value for the public far beyond the needs and interests of the purchasing organization. Procurement processes have become central arenas for the realization and prioritization of a variety of public value(s) and interests. We argue that this development calls for critical exploration for two main reasons. Firstly, despite the importance of procurement to policymakers as a vehicle for analyzing, structuring and handling controversy, and despite the considerable impact public procurement has on markets and societies, it has not received much attention in public administration and public sector accounting research (Hamilton, 2022). Secondly, the procurement logic (manifested in the regulations) demands calculability and commensurability in the handling of values, thus, procurement is a particularly fruitful site to explore how, and with what consequences, calculative practices can account for broader public value(s) and societal interests. Although the scholarly literature typically depicts public value as somewhat of a guiding principle for the organizing of public sector (Moore, 1995; O´Flynn, 2007), the concept is multifaceted and a variety of interpretations and definitions exist (Li, 2022). We adopt a constructivist view of value(s) as a contested and provisional judgment emerging in the form of a stabilized constellation of relations between ideas, technologies, actions and actors (Mennicken & Power 2015). In this paper, we therefore set out to examine how procurement processes “work” to organize (the prioritization of) public value(s) and the role of accounting in this (Bracci et al, 2021). We do so by addressing the question how things are made (publicly) valuable in public procurement, and more specifically, how procurement structures the valuation process.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Studier av offentlig förvaltning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Public Administration Studies (hsv//eng)

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