It was an honour to work with Southampton City Council assisting in enhancing Sustainable and Ethics Public Procurement Policy. It was a three-month placement, which offered me a lot of benefits as a PhD student researching on Sustainable Development. I am very grateful for Southampton’s public policy engagement team, Yaryna Basystyuk in Particular for putting this together and my supervisory team, especially main supervisor, professor Mine Karatas-Ozkan for allowing me to take time off my studies to perform the assignment in this placement.
I enjoyed working with the Supplier Management team of Southampton City Council to review different policies of the UK’s City Council to enhance the local economic, social and environmental benefits achieved through the Council’s procurement arrangements. So we worked together to understand best practices in the area of sustainable and ethical procurement and integrated procurement and contract management and ensure the policies are fit for the future. The assignment is a pivotal output of Southampton Wealth Building project and wider Southampton Pound initiative.
The benefits of were of reciprocal way, with previous experience in public procurement in Africa and current experience with sustainability research the Southampton city council benefited from the inputs of a reasonably experienced scholar. Similarly, the placement was very useful and productive to me as I was exposed to public procurement policies in the UK and Europe settings. Secondly, I learned a lot from well-versed, Southampton City Council Supplier management staff. More specifically, the placement was well-fitting with my current PhD research, which is focused on Sustainability and Sustainable Development with an emphasis on social entrepreneurship facilitation.
The review of the policies added a policy dimension to my research and my understanding of policies in sustainability has been furthered. I was happy to learn that public procurement in the UK and Europe, in general, recognise the importance of third sector economy especially social enterprises in the efforts of achieving sustainable development to local people.
Joseph Modest Kimaro is a third-year doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Business School, Department of Strategy, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship