Abstract
Despite expectations for socially sustainable supply networks becoming increasingly prominent, serious failures in social sustainability persist. Labour exploitation, unsafe working conditions, and inequality remain embedded in supply networks, even in highly regulated contexts, revealing a stark gap between sustainability-related ambitions and operational realities. This dissertation examines how procurement engages with social sustainability in such complex settings. Rather than treating these challenges as isolated compliance issues, it examines how outcomes are influenced by interactions between buyer–supplier relationships, market dynamics, and institutional conditions. Procurement operates at the core of these dynamics, simultaneously enabled and constrained by an array of associated factors.
The findings demonstrate that procurement does not rely solely on standardised solutions; rather, professionals manoeuvre between interdependent tensions related to costs, operations, and social sustainability. Their ability to act is dependent on how these tensions are constructed, how manoeuvring space is enabled, and how procurement intervenes in the broader systems in which risks arise. By integrating relational, organisational, and systemic perspectives, the dissertation offers a new understanding of how procurement can actively effect change. Social sustainability is achieved not immediately through individual decisions but over time through ongoing actions, interactions, and deliberate choices.