Green Procurement Adoption in Malaysia Versus Emerging Economies: A Post-Covid Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Green procurement has become increasingly important in the post-COVID-19 era as governments and organisations strive to strengthen supply chain resilience while advancing sustainability goals. The purpose of the review was to examine post-COVID procurement trends, describe their drivers and obstacles, analyse their theoretical applicability, and identify sector-specific insights. This study conducted a PRISMA 2020 systematic literature review to examine the post-pandemic adoption of green procurement in Malaysia, benchmarked against India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa, covering the period from 2019 to August 2025. Following rigorous inclusion, screening, and quality assessment procedures, 20 peer-reviewed empirical studies were retained for analysis. The findings show that 55% of the reviewed studies (11/20) directly addressed post-COVID procurement issues, and only 40% (8/20) used theoretical concepts such as Institutional Theory, the Resource-Based View, the Technology Acceptance Model, or ISO 20400. The literature was dominated by sectoral public procurement, education, and manufacturing, and healthcare and logistics have not been well explored. Malaysia is performing moderately, driven by the private sector’s dominance in digitalisation and the use of ISO-based practices; however, it is worse off than India and Brazil in applying these in the public sector, in policy consistency, and in institutional cohesion. The thematic analysis identifies six reorganised themes: institutional preparedness and governance capacity, policy and regulatory drivers, technological and digital facilitation, sectoral execution practices, adoption barriers, and post-COVID adaptive competence. This review addresses the main gaps in providing a comparative, post-COVID, theory-informed synthesis of green procurement in the Global South. It also identifies gaps in theoretical synthesis, sectoral balance, and resilience-focused analysis. The research offers practical implications for policy-makers and further develops the academic literature by making the case for more robust behavioural, institutional, and systems-based frameworks in future procurement studies.