Does green procurement pay off? Assessing the practice-performance link employing meta-analysis

The need for a shift to environmentally friendly economies is undisputed. Procurement responsibility is the steering of upstream supply chains; therefore, it is a main source for sustainable development, according to the Natural Resource-Based View. Recent studies examine the adoption of green procurement practices and highlight implementation barriers; the foremost seem to be reservations regarding the perceived cost of sustainable services. Extant research measures the impact of organisations' sustainable procurement on their overall economic performance. To contribute to the literature, this study adds three different performance measures to examine 22 empirical studies. We employ a meta-analytical methodology, adding operational, market, and financial measures. The results demonstrate that the introduction of green procurement practices has a positive effect in each of these areas and ultimately on organisations' overall economic performance.