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Analysis of institutional authors

Gutierrez Ponce, HereniaAuthor

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August 12, 2019
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Article

Responsible public procurement. Design of measurement indicators

Publicated to:CIRIEC-España. Revista de Economía Pública, Social y Cooperativa. 96 (96): 253-280 - 2019-07-01 96(96), DOI: 10.7203/CIRIEC-E.96.12627

Authors: Gutierrez Ponce, Herenia; Nevado Gil, Ma Teresa; Pache Duran, Maria

Affiliations

Univ Autonoma Madrid, Madrid, Spain - Author
Univ Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain - Author

Abstract

The European Union recognizes the importance of public procurement as one of the instruments that must be used to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In Spain, Law 9/2017, of November 8, on Public Sector Contracts, transposes the European Parliament and Council Directives 2014/23/EU and 2014/24/EU into the Spanish legal system. This law aims to incorporate transversally socially responsible criteria when preparing and executing public contracts. In addition, it obliges bidding companies to meet specific requirements on gender equality, fair labor conditions, fair trade consumption or energy efficiency. Specifically, the basic objectives pursued by the Law are; the impartiality and objectivity of procedures, greater transparency in public procurement and improving the quality- price ratio. All this means guaranteeing the correctness of the procedures, avoiding any hint of corruption and using public procurement in a strategic manner to implement, with the resources that are managed through the contracts, public policies at communitarian and national levels in the social, environmental, and development fields and the innovation and promotion of the participation of small and medium enterprises in public procurement. Faced with this situation, public administrations have begun to develop guidelines and approve instructions for the implementation of socially responsible clauses in their hiring. However, despite its importance, there is no specific measurement instrument that evaluates this type of behavior.In this context, we propose this research with the aim of facilitating a tool, composed of a series of ethical and sustainable indicators, in line with the new Law, which allow comparative measurement and comparison of the responsible behavior of administrations in relation to their public contracts. In this way, the contracting bodies must present in their specifications concrete measures to guarantee, on the one hand, integrity in their contracting procedures and, on the other hand, the strategic use of their contracts. All this it will allow to implement, with the resources that are managed through contracts, national and international policies in social, environmental, promotion of innovation and of the participation of small and medium enterprises in public procurement.The research has revealed the existence of numerous guides and publications for the implementation of social, ethical and environmental clauses in public procurement, as well as instructions or agreements on sustainable public procurement. Specifically, in Spain, there are many administrations that, in recent years, have published good practice guides for the inclusion of Social Responsibility clauses in their contracts. In addition, it has been observed the continued existing commitment of the Spanish public administrations with the Social Responsibility, through the approval of Agreements or Instructions. Indeed, since 2005, in which the Good Governance Code of the General State Administration was approved in Spain, and in 2009, when the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces approved its own Code of Good Governance, very significant steps have been taken in terms of Social Responsibility and sustainability. In the second stage of the study, a series of social and environmental indicators were created to evaluate and compare responsible practices in public procurement throughout the different phases of the contract (preparation, awarding, execution).This first investigation has some limitations derived from the lack of quantitative data, however, like any exploratory study, it constitutes a hypothesis-generating element and serves as the basis for future investigations that allow evaluating the hiring of the entities that make up the public sector in relationship to social, environmental and ethical issues. At the same time, this proposal may favor focusing the practices and responsible policies to address the observed shortcomings, contributing to obtain economic and social environmental benefits, for the Administration and for the private sector and society in general.According to the objectives formulated in this exploratory study, it has been proven that, increasingly and with a general nature, public administrations are aware and are concerned about the aspects that have to do with Transparency, Social Responsibility and sustainability. From the analysis of the current situation of sustainable public procurement, the important efforts of the initiatives, both national and international, aimed at strengthening a regulatory framework in this area are confirmed. Specifically, in Spain, it is observed that there are many administrations that adopt the commitment to be socially responsible in their hiring. However, the great task that remains to be done to adapt to the regulatory framework in these matters has been verified.The importance of this work, because it is a pioneer, is that it has defined a series of indicators that serve to evaluate sustainability in public procurement. In addition, the proposed indicators allow to guide the implementation of good practices and can be used in future research as a basic methodological instrument to advance in the understanding and improvement of sustainable public procurement processes. All this will allow knowing the current situation of sustainable public procurement and being able to compare them over time, evaluate the impact of the approval of procurement laws in local administrations, determine good practices in public procurement, measure the effects of instructions or agreements on public procurement, identify if there are patterns of behavior among public administrations in relation to their responsible contracting and what could be the conditioning factors of sustainable practices in public procurement.

Keywords

Administração pública e de empresas, ciências contábeis e turismoAdministração, ciências contábeis e turismoCiencias políticas y sociologíaDretEconomiaEconomicsEconomics and econometricsInterdisciplinarRevistas de ciencias economicas y empresarialesSociology and political science

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal CIRIEC-España. Revista de Economía Pública, Social y Cooperativa due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2019, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Sociology and Political Science.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from World Citations from Scopus Elsevier, it yields a value for the Field-Weighted Citation Impact from the Scopus agency: 1.01, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: ESI Nov 14, 2024)

This information is reinforced by other indicators of the same type, which, although dynamic over time and dependent on the set of average global citations at the time of their calculation, consistently position the work at some point among the top 50% most cited in its field:

  • Normalized Impact calculated by Dialnet Metrics: 43.75 (source consulted: Dialnet Metrics Dec 2023)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-10-10, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 6
  • Scopus: 16
  • Google Scholar: 7

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-10-10:

  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 170 (PlumX).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (GUTIERREZ PONCE, HERENIA) .