Green Public Procurement: A Critical Review of Fragmented Insights and an Integrated Research Agenda

ABSTRACT Green public procurement (GPP) has become an important policy instrument for advancing sustainability agendas. However, the expanding literature lacks theoretical integration. This paper provides a critical review of GPP research published between 2002 and 2025, synthesizing 836 peer‐reviewed articles from the Web of Science. Combining bibliometric mapping with content analysis, we identify the field's developmental trajectory from early conceptualization and institutional comparisons to contemporary foci on circular economy, digital transformation and supply chain collaboration. Research coalesces around four themes: policy frameworks, multi‐dimensional performance assessment, implementation barriers, and supply chain governance. However, these themes remain loosely connected by theoretical perspectives, including signaling, institutional and stakeholder theories that are applied in isolation. We further identify three inherent structural tensions that receive limited attention in the literature: between policy uniformity and local flexibility, among competing environmental, economic and social objectives, and between transactional efficiency and relational collaboration. Building on these observations, we synthesize an integrated framework mapping the interplay among theory, context, policy characteristics and methodology (TCCM). This framework provides a coherent structure for future research, shifting scholarly attention from isolated policy effects toward systemic understanding of how GPP can drive sustainable transformation.