Automated textual analysis of social sustainability in public procurement tenders in Morocco

Abstract

This article assesses the extent to which social criteria are incorporated into tender documents related to cleaning services within Moroccan public institutions. To this end, it aims to evaluate the integration of social sustainability criteria within a corpus of 1,254 tender documents and analyze the contribution of this integration to the protection of employees’ rights. The methodology is based on a quantitative approach relying on automated analysis of tender documents issued by Moroccan public institutions through text mining techniques. The results highlight a strong integration of social criteria related to compliance with minimum legal requirements, but show very limited consideration of more advanced social criteria. Specifically, these findings indicate that public procurement within Moroccan public entities remains primarily driven by a regulatory compliance logic rather than a strategic approach oriented toward social sustainability. Furthermore, they emphasize the need to strengthen public policies to better integrate social criteria into procurement procedures. In fact, this compliance-driven approach should be reviewed to encourage social sustainability. Such an evolution would enable public procurement to serve as a socio-economic policy instrument capable of steering the behavior of economic actors toward more inclusive and socially responsible practices.