Human resource development for inclusive procurement by intermediation: a situated learning theory application

Abstract

This paper fills an important gap in the human resource development (HRD) literature by considering the role that NGO intermediation initiatives can play in bringing together and developing corporate procurement officials (CPOs) and ethnic minority business owner-managers (EMBOs) supplying goods and services. It has been suggested that such initiatives hold great promise in helping ethnic minority businesses escape from their disadvantageous sectoral concentration in the UK. Using situated learning theory as an application lens, the main aim of this paper is to demonstrate how nurturing communities of practice of CPOs and EMBOs and facilitating their interaction can help their professional development and their approaches to procuring and supplying, respectively. The paper reports on the authors' experience with an action research programme encompassing two intermediation initiatives of this kind. The lessons drawn from this study are useful for all those concerned with HRD for inclusive procurement; intermediaries promoting inclusive procurement, large procurers who are willing to engage with supplier diversity and ethnic minority suppliers who wish to access corporate procurement systems and ‘break-out’.

Keywords::

• communities of practice
• competences development
• diversity and inclusion
• HRD
• practice-based HRD

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the East Midlands Development Agency and the ESRC for supporting the two projects this paper reports upon. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers and the editors for helpful suggestions regarding earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

^1. For the purpose of the current research, ethnic minority businesses are defined as enterprises that are either wholly or at least 50% owned and run by ethnic minority people. Such businesses are usually small.

^2. A prominent example is the National Minority Supplier Development Council.

^3. According to the UK Business Innovation and Skills Department's definition of small and medium sized enterprises, a micro enterprise employs fewer than 10 workers.