Can I get some help down here? Inter-project support for creating social value through social procurement

Employment requirements are one type of criterion which can be used in (social) procurement to create social value. Employment requirements are used to mitigate issues like segregation and social exclusion by offering internships and jobs for long-term unemployed people. Employment requirements are empirically and theoretically unexamined, and practical know-how of how to implement employment requirements is lacking. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate how practitioners working in individual construction projects, i.e. those who in their daily work deal with both employment requirements and the interns employed through the requirements, perceive the relationship with their central construction organization (head office) and client in terms of support, information, and resources. 28 semi-structured interviews with practitioners working operatively in four projects having different types of clients (public, private, municipal, and internal client) were studied and analysed using a theoretical framework of temporary vs. permanent organizing. Findings indicate that the type of client does not impact the prerequisites, support, information or resources provided to individual construction projects, but rather that the central organization’s and client’s maturity and experience with employment requirements are what matters. Furthermore, construction practitioners are often pushed to engage with the interns but are rarely given sufficient resources in terms of time and space to properly do so. It is also unclear what tasks the project, central organization, and client should be responsible for, e.g. concerning follow-up. The paper concludes that support, information, and resources are often insufficient for individual construction projects to integrate interns fully into the organization, and the quality of internships and future outlook for interns may be impeded. This paper provides a bottom-up perspective on social procurement and illustrates what central construction organizations and clients can do better to enable effective implementation of employment requirements. Also, it provides novel, detailed insight into a scarcely researched phenomenon.