Compliance; Supply Chain; Leadership; Sustainability, Procurement

The objectives of the study were to comprehend the influence of regulatory compliance on the adoption of sustainable procurement practices by organisations, whilst examining whether decision makers in supply chains have the capacity to balance compliance and the interests of various stakeholders in supply chain management decision making processes. This research submits that supply chains play a significant role in ensuring that the contribution towards sustainability goals is enhanced, using the lens of stakeholder theory, institutional theory and the PESTEL framework. The approach adopted for the present research involved descriptive statistics and hypotheses tests that were utilised to quantitatively investigate primary research data that was collected using a survey involving 247 supply chain and sustainability practitioners within the public and the private sector. It was observed that practitioners are able to incorporate and translate stakeholder considerations into compliant requirements. Finally, the results demonstrated that there is a significant relationship between regulatory compliance and sustainability, highlighting the contribution of supply chain compliance towards driving sustainable development. The implications for academicians, researchers and practitioners were identified, in which new approaches to existing concepts were established. This research contributes to contemporary knowledge on sustainable procurement and supply chain management. Additionally, the empirical findings concluded that regulatory compliance has a direct influence on the acceptance of sustainable procurement by organisations particularly through internal policies that are tailored to emulate the business environment and culture.