How is E-procurement Related to the Success of U.S. Cities’
Sustainable Purchasing Policies?
Jeffrey Iles
April 27, 2017
Center for Organization and Research Design

Abstract
Sustainable purchasing policies and e-procurement are both fast becoming popular topics across
city governments in the United States. As these two relatively new initiatives meet, the
relationship they share has some promising implications that have gone mostly unexplored until
now. E-procurement systems have gained a reputation of being one of the most effective ways to
advance sustainable purchasing goals, but the belief alone may not be enough to create directorlevel buy-in throughout city governments. The possible link between these two tools was
identified while working with the City of Phoenix’s Office of Environmental Programs. While
helping them integrate sustainability considerations into their procurement process, it was
noticed that e-procurement systems typically facilitated many of the obstructions the department
faced and that there could be a positive relationship between their already existing e-procurement
system and their sustainable purchasing policy. To investigate this relationship deeper, a survey
of city government procurement was sent to 1,845 directors from Finance, Public Works, and
Environmental departments across 791 U.S. cities. These decision-makers answered questions
relating to their assessment of how sustainable purchasing policies are implemented and the
extent to which their city uses an e-procurement system. Tests of independence were then
performed to determine if a relationship between different e-procurement activities and
perceived success of cities’ sustainable purchasing policies existed. Results show that the use of
an environmentally friendly database of products and services in a city’s e-procurement system
is the single most important e-procurement pursuit cities can undertake to influence the opinions
that city managers have regarding the success of their sustainable purchasing policy. By
understanding this connection, The City of Phoenix and other cities facing the same challenges
are able to develop best practices to leverage e-procurement for purchasing sustainably and fully
implementing their sustainable purchasing policies.

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Table of Contents
ABSTRACT

1

PROBLEM STATEMENT

2

PROJECT BACKGROUND

3

STAKEHOLDERS

3

INTRODUCTION

4

SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING POLICIES

5

SUSTAINABILITY AND E-PROCUREMENT

6

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

7

RESULTS

9

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

10

RECOMMENDATIONS

11

APPENDIX

12

Problem Statement
The City of Phoenix has dedicated itself to sustainability goals that will enhance the quality of
life for their residence and improve the relationship the built environment has with the natural
one over the next 30 years (City of Phoenix, 2017). Many other U.S. cities have also signed
climate action plans to reduce their environmental burden over the next few decades (Compact of
Mayors). These cities recognize the value of seeking innovative ways to lower their carbon
footprint while reducing costs and waste via pointed policy tools (Case, 2016). Sustainable
purchasing policies (SPP), also known as green purchasing policies and environmental
purchasing policies, are a set of purchasing policies that outline a government’s preference for
products and vendors that reduce the burden of environmental, social, and economic costs to
their taxpayers and the larger society (Marron, 2004). However, these policy tools are not a silver
bullet. Cities with SPPs may not have the capacity to integrated them sufficiently, hurting their
ability to overcome entrenched barriers to sustainable purchasing (Walker &, Brammer 2012).
To reduce those obstacles and realize the full potential of SPPs, cities require a comprehensible
method to track sustainable metrics, overcome disjoined data systems, introduce mechanisms for
accountability, and increasing efficiencies, effectiveness, and transparency (Clark, 2017). Eprocurement (EP) systems have the capacity to provide for these needs (Prier & McCue, 2007).
EPs allow city governments to measure and manage their efforts to reduce waste and cost
associated with purchasing goods and services while enhancing their line-of-sight into a
multitude of procurement operations. These EP uses have the potential to increase the success of
cities’ SPPs by empowering cities to make decision with clearer operational knowledge (Clark,
2017). The combined use of EPs and SPPs have significant implications for getting cities to

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E-Procurement and SPP Success
reduce their spending while also being socially and environmentally responsible through
practical, data driven solutions. Yet, to facilitate these changes, city manager support is a crucial
first-step. Their buy-in could potentially make or break their respective departments’ and cities’
ability to adopt tools that can enhance their sustainability efforts.
Project Background
In the Summer of 2016, Professor Nicole Darnall and three other ASU professors affiliated with
the Center for Organization and Research Design (CORD) were awarded a grant from the V.
Kann Rasmussen Foundation (VKRF), a charitable foundation with a mission of strengthening
environmental research. The grant outlined a need for researching local governments’ sustainable
procurement efforts. The project involved a nationwide survey of directors within city
governments that inquired about city procurement processes and sustainability efforts. The
survey was sent to about 1845 directors from almost 800 of the U.S.’s largest city governments.
I joined the CORD team as a graduate researcher with an academic background in sustainability
and public administration. My interests in these two fields coupled with my plan to use the data
from this project as a base for my Sustainable Solutions Culminating Experience helped convey
my enthusiasm about the position and why I was a good fit for the team.
Coinciding with the grant funded project, the CORD team coordinated with the City of
Phoenix’s Office of Environmental Programs to identify opportunities for the City to integrate
environmental considerations more fully into its purchasing processes. CORD researchers,
including myself, conducted focus groups with procurement officers across five different city
departments, focusing on their insights to barriers and facilitators of effective sustainable
purchasing practices. Additionally, I joined a team of graduate students from Dr. Darnall’s Fall
2016 class titled, Organizations, Sustainability & Public Policy to benchmark the City of
Phoenix’s idea for a sustainability rating program against 10 other U.S. cities who had such a
program in place and had a formal sustainable purchasing policy. From these separate but
interconnecting projects, I identified a gap between most of the cities’ inability to fully realize
their sustainable purchasing goals with the potential of their e-procurement systems to help them
in that endeavor. This potentially significant disparity became the basis for my Culminating
Experience.
Stakeholders
I identified eight stakeholders, grouped into three categories, that were important to the success
of this project. The first group of stakeholders were those who were directly linked to the project
and who’s support was critical for completing my culminating experience. This group of
stakeholders was comprised of CORD and VKRF. CORD provided me with the educational
foundation, mentorship, and collaboration that I benefitted from while taking on a project of this
scope, while VKRF was my funding source throughout the academic year.
The second group of stakeholders is comprised of the City of Phoenix’s Finance and
Environmental Programs departments. This group was classified as significant because they have
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E-Procurement and SPP Success
been so willing to share the inner-workings of their City’s procurement processes with the
CORD team over the past year. Their involvement with this project had been invaluable and they
will be provided with a first look at the results of this report. Both departments have expressed in
maintaining a relationship with CORD and they have expressed interest in the potential role eprocurement may play in their pursuit of purchasing more sustainably.
I have coordinated with the City of Phoenix’s Office of Environmental Programs to give
valuable practitioner feedback of my report. Upon receiving criticism from this second group of
stakeholders I can begin shopping my product to my third and final group. This third group of
stakeholders is a list of individuals and groups who are potentially interested in the broader
implications of this report. I plan to network with this group to enhance the conversation
surrounding e-procurement and sustainable purchasing policies. These interested stakeholders
include The American City and County Journal (ACCJ), GreyLine sustainability consulting
group, The Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC), and The International
City/County management Association (ICMA). A diagram of these stakeholder is shown in
Appendix 1.
Introduction
As the U.S. population grows, so does demand for resources we use to maintain our way of life
(Hardin, 2009). In the case of finite resources, we need to consider potential negative impacts to
the environment and to human health to maintain social progression (Wackernagel & Rees,
1998). This dilemma has become a central talking point throughout the United States with many
voices in local governments advocating for alternative solutions to the status quo. This growing
group of sustainably minded public employees are fast becoming advocates for purchasing
environmentally preferred products to reduce cost, waste, and environmental impacts (Walker et
al., 2008). Entire city governments are beginning to look for environmentally sustainable
processes to achieve economically sustainable solutions (Porter and Van de Linde, 1995). To this
end, an increasing number of cities are reevaluating how they spend money and what they can do
to implement more sustainably focused procurement practices (Case, 2016).
The use of sustainable purchasing policies (SPPs) in U.S. city governments is a growing trend
among progressive municipalities (Case, 2016). 70 percent of all City purchasers say they
consider procuring goods and services that meet certain environmental rated standards (Case,
2016). SPPs are designed to help city procurement officials purchase in a systematic way that
outlines their city’s commitment to supporting environmentally friendly, responsibly sourced,
and locally operated goods and services (Walker et al., 2008). Yet, SPPs are just one of many
purchasing policies that compete for priority within city procurement (Darnall et al., 2017)
(Wilkes & Blaine, 2015).
For instance, the City of Phoenix has had an SPP in place since 2007. Yet the City faced several
major roadblocks relating to its implementation of the policy. It lacked a uniform way to identify
environmentally preferable products, leading to the confusion of procurement officers and
vendors. There has also been insufficient funding to oversee the verification and monitoring of
vendor sponsored sustainable products displayed on vendor websites (Darnall et al., 2017). Due

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E-Procurement and SPP Success
to their insufficient funding, the City has had to make tough choices regarding which programs
they will monitor and which ones lose out to other competing commitments.
One of these competing commitments is the need to reduce spending (Thomas, 2010), which
often sway city managers toward more fiscally conservative short-term focused decisions with
detrimental effects to their sustainability efforts (Mitlin & Satterthwaite, 1996). However,
increasing evidence challenges the viewpoint that sustainable procurement comes at a higher cost
(Porter and Van de Linde, 1995). Technological advances to raw materials, manufacturing,
packaging, distribution, use, reuse, operation, maintenance, and disposal of alternative resources
used in primary spending categories like janitorial supplies and office products are leading to
sustainable options that are becoming less expensive and more competitive (GSA).
But technological advancements are likely not enough to encourage cities to implement SPPs.
Cities likely need a tool that can help them to measure and manage their sustainable purchasing
efforts (Walker & Brammer, 2012). The use of an e-procurement system is one such tool that
assists city managers when tracking their city’s sustainability endeavors (Puschmann & Alt,
2005). However, it is unclear how city managers with both an e-procurement system and an SPP
at their disposal use the former to assess the performance of the latter.
This study addressed this gap by using data from a recent survey on citywide government
procurement. It examined whether various e-procurement activities are associated with the
perceived success of a city’s sustainable purchasing policy. Digging into this knowledge gap
provides cities, like Phoenix, who may have just enough political capital to achieve one
sustainability endeavor with analytical knowledge to make an informed decision on which eprocurement activities will offer them the biggest bang for their buck.
Sustainable Purchasing Policies
Public procurement is defined as the buying of goods or services by or for a governing agency
(Fang, 2002). Collectively, city and state governments nationwide spend $1.6 trillion in the
purchasing of goods annually (Potoski, 2008). Cities purchase a multitude of goods and services
ranging from paper products to vehicle fleets. Over the past 20 years, an increasing number of
city governments have begun thinking about more than just the financial costs of buying these
products. In some instances, environmental and social considerations have become almost as
important as financial ones (Walker & Brammer, 2012).
Local governments are starting to embrace the notion that fiscal, social, and environmental costs
are all related (Albareda et al., 2007). Gradually, there is greater understanding why defining
costs solely by financial standards isn’t providing cities with all the information they need to
make long-term decisions on behalf of their residents (Lange, 2013). More and more people are
demanding environmental and social concerns be addressed with public funds (Lubchenco,
1998).
To soften the environmental, social, and economic impacts created by the sheer volume of goods
and services being purchased by local governments, roughly one fifth of the largest U.S. city
governments have adopted a formal sustainable purchasing policy (CORD, 2017). Their SPPs
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E-Procurement and SPP Success
outline their city’s main objectives for purchasing sustainably and provide clear guidance for
preferential products and third-party standards (Darnall et al., 2017). Cities implement SPPs to
aid them in their plans to address holistic benefits to themselves, their residents, and the greater
society (Preuss, 2009). There is good reason to believe that this trend will become the new norm
in the United States. Approximately 60 percent of all city procurement agents nationwide
reported using either a formal or informal SPP last year, with an additional 18 percent saying
their city has plans to develop one (Case, 2016).
However, there are still many who challenge the notion that SPPs create a “win win” practice for
reducing financial costs while also offsetting environmental and social costs (Porter and Van de
Linde, 1995). These challenges typically exist when a city is unable to both manage and measure
their purchasing and procurement in a centralized manner that can be readily accessible by
decision-makers within the organization (Walker et al., 2008). Many times, the inability to
produce useful metrics creates roadblocks that inhibit the connection of environmental issues to
social ones, managing competing objectives, deconflicting prior commitments and agendas,
changing outdated organizational culture, receiving top level buy-in and training, minimizing
short term thinking, and generally staying the course when faced with tight financial resources
(Walker & Phillips, 2009). Cities with SPPs are not immune from these barriers and in many
instances, they find themselves underutilizing their policy. Many cities simply don’t have the
resources to follow up with the specifications of their sustainable purchasing policy or to ensure
that their vendors are providing them with accurate sustainability metrics (Walker & Preuss,
2008). More tools are needed to streamline the process of procuring sustainably and an eprocurement system is one tool with promise.
Sustainability and E-procurement
The use of electronic procurement, like sustainable purchasing, is also a new phenomenon in
government. These digital, business-to-government platforms enable the purchase and sale of
goods and services via information network systems like the internet (Fang, 2002). As part of the
new trend in e-government, e-procurement is a means to better serve citizens in the digital
economy by increasing efficiencies, effectiveness, and transparency (Prier & McCue, 2007). EP
can streamline once fragmented data systems, eliminating broken processes and simultaneously
provides accountability in U.S. state governments (Clark, 2017). Measuring performance,
centrally managing contracts, and enhanced sourcing strategies are a few priorities that local
governments have collectively noted EP systems potentially offer to them (Clark, 2017).
There are a variety of ways that cities using e-procurement systems can purchase goods and
services. Cities have the option to centralize their purchasing in the finance department or
decentralize their purchasing fully to the receiving departments. There are also various mixed
centralization and decentralized methods used depending on the city (Prier & McCue, 2007). In
the U.S., the use of some form of a mixed procurement structure is the most common approach
to purchasing (Bartle & Korosec, 2003). However, mixed methods of purchasing create a need
for each city department to track their own purchases and train their own personnel how to
navigate e-procurement platforms (Preuss, 2009).

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However, as more cities work to establish and operationalize their sustainability goals (Keating,
2017), they are looking to e-procurement as a tool that they can tailor to their specific needs. The
use of EP is associated with increased communication between buyers and suppliers that are
beneficial for environmental, health, and safety objectives of governing agencies (Walker &
Brammer, 2012). EP systems can also generate awareness and demand for sustainable
functionality between competing procurement policies while simultaneously promoting the use
of internal tools that help green procurement initiatives (O’Rourke, 2015). The combined use of
a sustainable purchasing policy and e-procurement therefore has the potential to be an extremely
effective way for cities to measure their sustainable procurement efforts and to better manage
them (Keating, 2017). Yet little is known about the influence an e-procurement system
potentially has over city managers’ perceptions of their city’s efforts to procure sustainably.
Likewise, there is no information regarding the effect that specific EP activities contribute to this
possible relationship.
This study helps to understand these dynamics by determining which aspect of e-procurement
activities are associated with city managers’ notions of perceived SPP success. Understanding
how these directors from cities currently using an EP perceive the success of their SPP helps to
identify drivers that influence increased sustainable procurement (Hidson & Clement, 2008).
Thus, creating the leverage for their city’s environmental or sustainability departments to build
the necessary financial, environmental, and social case to link the two tools together and increase
their influence in their city’s procurement process (Pruess & Walker, 2011).
Research Methodology
Data were collected by way of an online survey. The survey contained 39 questions and took
approximately 16 minutes to complete. Survey questions examined both city and department
level procurement and sustainability practices and were presented as scaled, or yes or no
questions. Before distributing the survey, the CORD team built a list of prospective respondents
from scratch. Our team targeted 1,845 director-level, city employees from cities’ finance,
environmental, and public works departments across 791 cities with populations of 50,000
people or higher. We focused on department directors because of their responsibility for
implementing policies and for setting the tone within their departments regarding procurement
norms.
After a master list of our desired respondents was built, we developed a plan to distribute our
instrument. To enhance our legitimacy, we sent iterations of the survey reinforced with mail and
phone calls that provided detailed information on our project. We began by sending an official
letter to each person on our contact list that introduced our team and project. After the first letter,
we timed an email delivery with a survey link to arrive in their inbox one week later. Then we
sent a postcard that provided another introduction and additional contact information. That
postcard was timed to arrive approximately at the same time the second email with a survey link
was sent. We sent one last postcard with a reminder asking for participation that was also timed
to arrive with a third email containing a survey link. By the end of our mail/email phase, our
team recorded a response rate of 17 percent. We then undertook two iterations of phone calls to
non-respondents. Those phone calls where matched to emailed survey links, mirroring our

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mail/email approach. By the end of the phone call phase, our combined full and partial response
rate was 46 percent or a total of 851 responses from 567 cities.
To look at how e-procurement was related to the perceived success of SPPs, only respondents
whom answered yes to having both an e-procurement system and a formal SPP were considered.
This cut was necessary to focus on survey questions that specifically looked at the relationship
between EP and SPP. Therefore, only data from the following four survey questions were used in
the analysis:
•
•

•
•

“To the best of your knowledge, has your city implemented an e-procurement system?”
“Please indicate whether your city has implemented the following elements in your eprocurement system:
o Online bid process (yes/no/don’t know)
o e-procurement training for purchasing officers (yes/no/don’t know)
o Tracking of e-procurement purchases (yes/no/don’t know)
o Database of environmentally friendly products and services” (yes/no/don’t know)
“To the best of your knowledge, does your city have a Citywide environmental
sustainability policy?” (yes/no/don’t know)
“We are interested in your overall assessment of the implementation of your city's
environmentally sustainability purchasing policy.” (rating scale from -5 to 5).

Of the 851 respondents, 237 answered yes to having an e-procurement system. Those
respondents were then prompted to answer follow-on question pertaining to the activities of their
city’s EP. Of which, 155 indicated having an online bid process, 156 used EP to train
procurement agents, 154 tracked purchases through their EP system, and 50 had an
environmentally friendly database of products and services. Similarly, 209 people indicated that
they had a formal SPP in their cities. Of those respondents, 155 rated their city’s SPP
implementation. However, the total number of respondents who answered both yes to having and
rating an SPP and to having an EP was a collective 60 people. Images of the survey questions
presented is available in Appendix 2 while a chart of the response rate table is shown in
Appendix 3.
I used a Chi2 Test of Independence to examine the relationship between EP and SPP success of
these 60 respondents. This test was suitable to evaluate the likeliness that the observed frequency
differences in the high, medium, and low categories for SPP assessment were consistent with the
significant outputs of their probability. This analysis was appropriate to evaluate whether the
observed overlap between EP use and implementation, and SPP use and rating happened by
chance or if it was statistically correlated (Pearson, 1900).
Along with a Pearson’s correlation test of independence, a Fisher’s exact test was also
implemented in the analysis of the contingency tables. While the Pearson’s correlation test was
used to find the causal relationship between the e-procurement activates and the high, medium,
and low categories of the SPP assessment, the Fisher’s exact test was used to determine how
probable is was that each of the EP activates shared a relationship to perceived SPP success
given the small size of the sample.

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Before the test could be run, answers pertaining to the respondent’s knowledge of EP
implementation were collapsed from yes, no, or don’t know to yes or no. Answers of don’t know
were omitted. The object of the analysis was to determine performance perceptions that city
managers have, therefore, answers of don’t know produced invalidity in the dataset (Vannette,
2015). Similarly, the SPP 11-point ordinal rating scale had to be reformatted to a high, medium,
and low categorical variable to perform a test of independence. Low ratings encompassed
answers in the negative numbers on the scale while a medium rating was neither successful or
unsuccessful and high ratings included all scale options that were positive numbers. A chart of
the frequency table is shown in Appendix 4.
Four separate tests of independence were initially run using the high, medium, and low variable
for SPP perceived effectiveness against each of the four EP activities question separately. Online
bid process, e-procurement training for purchasing officers, tracking of e-procurement purchases,
and a database of environmentally friendly products and services each were tested to determine
the likeliness of there being a relationship with SPP assessment. After each EP activity was
tested separately, they were combined with one another systematically to determine how they
performed as a unit.
Results
Of the individual tests run for online bid process, e-procurement training for purchasing officers,
and tracking of e-procurement purchases there were no significant results that would conclude
they influenced the 60 department directors’ assessment of their cities’ sustainable purchasing
policies. However, when a test of independence was run with EP database of environmentally
friendly products and services, a significant relationship was found. A chart of the contingency
table is shown in Appendix 5.
The results show that 58 percent of city managers with an environmental database report that
their SPP is successful, whereas 36 percent of city managers without an environmental database
report that their SPP is successful (p<.05). The 22 percent difference in perceived
implementation success offers strong initial evidence about the importance that a city's
environmentally friendly database of goods and services.
When different e-procurement activities were combined, they led to mixed results with respect to
SPP success. Of all the combinations of EP activities tested, only four had significant results.
The use of an environmentally friendly database combined with an online bid process was
related to SPP success (p<.10), however, substantively, the results were not noteworthy. That is,
by combining the database with an online bid process, SPP success increased by only 6 percent.
Similarly, the use of environmentally friendly database combined with an online bid process and
EP training was also related to SPP success (p<.05). However, the effect was much greater in
that it was related with a 27 percent increase in success rate. The use of an environmentally
friendly database combined with an EP training and EP tracking had a similar effect. Appendix 5
describes each of the combined findings.

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In conclusion, some combinations of EP activities strengthen perceptions of SPP success while
others do not. The extent to which activities highlight the effectiveness of others is not clear from
this analysis. At most, the observation that an environmental database positively increases the
capacity of an online bid process and only the combination of these two may somehow influence
the standing EP training and tracking can be made. Further testing is needed to understand the
true nature that these combined EP activities have on city manager’s assessment of their
sustainable purchasing policies
Discussion and Conclusion
The implementation of an environmentally friendly database of goods and services is the single
most important EP activity that a city can implement to increase the positive perceptions their
department directors have for a sustainable purchasing policy. However, EP environmentally
friendly databases are not a silver bullet. There were 42% of city managers recorded without a
database who indicated success of their SPP meaning other factors are present that need to be
addressed in understanding the perceptions city managers have of their SPPs.
Also, in many instances perceived success went down when EP activities were combined with
environmental databases while other combinations shown to increased efficacy. This study lacks
the ability to understand the relationship that combined uses of e-procurement have with one
another yet a few additional conclusions can be drawn from these findings.
Because no other EP activity was significant without being grouped with environmental
databases, it is possible to conclude that only under the umbrella of environmentally friendly
databases, other EP activates persuade have sway in city managers’ assessment of their SPPs. TO
be certain, further evaluation is needed. A multivariate ordinal regression using the four
combined EP activities to predict positive or negative effects of the 60 respondents’ SPP
assessment would produce regression coefficients that represent how each EP factor positively or
negatively effects the SPP performance score.
There are many possible reasons for the disparity in these results. One such reason could be the
implementation of different types of purchasing structures (McCue, & Pitzer, 2000; Bartle &
Korosec, 2003). Each type of system requires its own set of purchasing norms that could greatly
influence the perceptions city managers have towards their SPPs. Another factor could be that
the more a city manager is able to measure and manage their e-procurement platform, the more
negative information they receive that might work to decrease their perception of their city’s
sustainable purchasing policy. Finally, understanding must be given to who oversees a city’s EP.
E-procurement platform customers are typically one person within a city who must opt-in to
sustainable functionalities. In many instances, the e-procurement platform customer is the city’s
CFO, Finance Director, or System Administrator (O’Rourke, 2015). However, these
management-level, financial decision-makers tend to be more of a barrier to sustainable
purchasing than a facilitator (Walker & Brammer, 2012). In this instance, finding leverage to
upload tools like the EPA’s faculty registry service links (FRS) that are complete with usable
meta databases of environmentally friendly products or their guidelines for assessing
performance standards and ecolabels may still be a difficult task to accomplish.
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This scenario was true of the City of Phoenix and what was found was that further information
sharing between the City’s Environmental Programs Office (OEP) and their Finance Department
was needed. During the pro bono and student projects with the City our team briefed both
departments of our finding and were able to facilitate a discussion between the two departments.
Information regarding Phoenix’s plan to implement centralized tracking within the eprocurement system was passed from the Assistant Finance Director to the Environmental
Programs Director after recommendations from the CORD team touched on this subject. This
project hopes to build on the information sharing of the two departments by helping the City’s
OEP to push for an environmental database pilot test that could be centrally tracking with their
new EP software.
Recommendations
Cities like Phoenix should consider implementing an environmental database in their city’s eprocurement system.
Cities should also look at combining use of an environmentally friendly database of goods and
services with other e-procurement features (Online bid process, training for procurement agents,
and e-procurement tracking of purchases.) for greater combined success, keeping in mind that
the database must be in place first.
They should also consider linking their e-procurement system to the EPA’s guidelines for
assessing performance standards and ecolabels.
Understand that there is no silver bullet. A database will work best if accompanied by other
positive reinforcement for shifting procurement habits. Enhanced communication between a
city’s finance department and other departments is central in changing purchasing behavior.

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Appendix

1. Stakeholder Diagram

GreyLine

ACCJ
Interested

City of Phoenix

Significant
CORD
VKRF

Crucial

Finance &
OEP
ICMA

SPLC

2. Survey Questions

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3. Response Rates Table
Total Survey Responses: n=851
Questions
Yes
No/DK
Use of EP
237
514
-Online Bid
155
82
-EP Training
156
81
-EP Tracking
154
83
-Enviro DB
50
187
Use of SPP
209
642
-Assessed SPP
155
54
-SPP Assessment
H= 90, M= 44, L= 21
*See frequency table for SPP assessment High/Low breakdown

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4. Frequency Table
Assessment of SPP Implementation: n=155
Scale
Value
Frequency
-5
Very Unsuccessful
3
-4
6
-3
7
-2
6
-1
2
0
Neither/Nor
41
1
29
2
23
3
27
4
10
5
Very Successful
1

Rating
Low
Low
Low
Low
Low
Medium
High
High
High
High
High

5. Contingency Table
Individual Factors
Perceived SPP Performance
EP Activity

Low
with
Online Bid
57%
EP Training 75%
EP Tracking 83%
Enviro DB
36%

Low
without
43%
25%
17%
64%

Med
with
77%
83%
85%
11%

Med
without
23%
17%
15%
89%

High
with
75%
87%
78%
58%

High
without
25%
13%
22%
42%

Pearson

Fisher’s

0.41
0.65
0.85
.042

0.47
0.71
1.0
.046

Combined Factors
Perceived SPP Performance
EP Activity

Low
with
DB + Bid
31%
DB + Train
27%
DB + Track
27%
DB + Bid + Train 27%
DB + Bid + Track 30%
DB+Train+Track 27%
All Combined
27%

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Low
without
69%
73%
73%
73%
70%
73%
73%

Med
with
11%
13%
11%
0%
11%
0%
0%

Med
without
89%
87%
89%
100%
89%
100%
100%

High
with
40%
33%
43%
54%
38%
47%
37%

High
without
60%
67%
57%
46%
62%
53%
63%

Pearson Fisher’s
.058
0.23
0.22
.017
0.34
.05
.017

.063
0.27
0.27
0.13
0.43
.043
.013

14

E-Procurement and SPP Success
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