Variation in the implementation in Swedish Municipalities: Social requirements in public procurement

Abstract: This thesis has attempted to map and explain the vaiation in implementation of social requirements in public procurement. The objects of study are the municipalities of Sweden from which both policy documents and procurement requirement specifications were collected. The thesis developed two models to explain the variation in two implementation types, the implementation into municipal strategic guidelines, and the usage of requirements in procurements collected from three procurement types. The theisis limited the study to three kinds of social requirement; collective agreements, equal opportunity and optional full time. The analysis consisted of both bivariate analysis, as well as linear regression. The bivariate analysis showed that there were no provisions, or requirements of, optional full time.Of the strategic guidelines studied, roughly 30% contained provisions for collective agreement and equal opportunity. The social requirements in the requirement specification varied between the three types of procurements.The results of the regressions were inconclusive, but indicated that the number of administrators had a positive correlation with the use of social requirements, and that open-ended provisions had a negative impact. The political explaination for the variation in implementation did not reach confidence levels where we with certainty could use it to explain the variation.