Sustainable procurement in HE institutions: the role of local buying

This paper investigates local buying as one of the sustainable procurement practices implemented in HE institutions, employing institutional theory as a theoretical background. A single, in-depth case study method is adopted in order to examine the implementation of local buying in food procurement in a leading HE institution based in the UK. Key findings include: the presence of local buying as a key strategy, driven predominantly by social concerns and the ways in which this is extended to multiple supplier tiers; the influence exerted by the particular university under analysis upon local suppliers and the relationship with those local suppliers.