Investigating the sustainable procurement practices among ISO14001 certified public and private organisations in Johor

Malaysia has developed from the agriculture-based economy to an organisationalbased economy which involves public and private sectors. Eventually, public and private sector began their contribution towards GDP of Malaysia. Literatures and researches have shown that public and private sector procurement activities are one of the reasons of environmental issues occurring in Malaysia. Hence, public and private sector organisation are facing pressure from global market to improve their sustainability performance by implementing sustainable procurement practices. This research was designed to identify the implementation level of current sustainable procurement practices in the public and private organisation; to examine the differences of sustainable procurement practices between public and private organisation; as well as to investigate the relationship between the barriers and sustainable procurement practices in public and private organisation. The research adapted survey research design using questionnaire to obtain data of sustainable procurement practices from representatives of ISO 14001 Certified public and private organisation in Johor. The questionnaire was adapted from previous studies, and random sampling was used to select respondents. In total, 282 questionnaires were distributed to the ISO 14001 certified public and private organisation, 149 returned and 3 removed which resulted in response rate of 52%. The results shows that the implementation level of sustainable procurement practices are moderate, and there are significant differences of sustainable procurement practices between public and private organisation. The results suggest that private sector should strive more to implement sustainable procurement from the environmental point of view. Four of the barriers are also identified to have a significant relationship with sustainable procurement practices, i.e. cost, technological barriers, supplier conflicts as well as resources conflicts. This study contributes valuable insight into the barriers of sustainable procurement practices of public and private organisations in Johor