Making sense of the Indigenous procurement policy literature using a policy life cycle lens

The objective of this paper is to provide a most needed comprehensive synthesis of the Indigenous procurement literature to clarify the state of the art in this area of management scholarship, as well as the associations between local conditions and policy evolution and developments across post-colonial societies. We conducted a rapid systematic literature review of the contemporary Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) literature. We identified and reviewed 18 qualitative and one quantitative published study from 2000 to 2023. We found weak author collaboration density across regions, with Australia producing the bulk of IPP research. We utilised the five-stage policy life cycle model to map the contemporary scholarly literature on IPP in Australia to identify critical evidence gaps in the research. In the Australian literature, there is minimal scholarship on the institutional agenda setting and formulation phase of the IPP, with research on the adoption phase making clear the case of public policy transfer from the United States, as an early exemplar, to Australia. The research on the implementation phase has focused on the evolution of the policy objectives and legality of the policy. More recent scholarship has focused on evaluating the IPP, reflecting the later stages of the policy life cycle. The findings from this review emphasise the usefulness of the policy life cycle model as an organising device in understanding the evolution of scholarship and identifying critical gaps to be addressed to deepen our understanding of policy development in the IPP domain. JEL classification : J15, H57