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There is currently much debate about the meaning of competency and its importance to professionalization. This article explores the personal meaning and importance of competency from the perspective of public buyers and managers in Ireland and the UK. Using an in-depth mixed method research design, we propose a typology of public procurement competency and discuss the implications of the framework for professionalization of public procurement.

Using the lens of mentoring theory the authors test the extent to which public buyers informally support suppliers and the influence of organisational context on mentoring support. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Principal component analysis was used to analyse questionnaire responses from over 300 public buyers in Ireland. Cluster analysis produced three mentor profiles.

The findings show a positive relationship between organisations that take a strategic approach to suppliers and buyers who offer career and psychosocial support to suppliers. However, those organisations that lack a strategic perspective of suppliers saw buyers offer political support and coaching.

The implications are that coaching and political support may compensate for deficits in organisational support for suppliers generally. The findings contribute to a growing literature on informal interaction opportunities in public procurement.

To date research of supplier development is limited to formal developmental activities and in the context of private sector buyer-supplier relationships.

The aim of this paper is to explore how micro‐enterprises interact with public procurement systems. The paper seeks to give public procurement managers a better understanding of how micro‐enterprises approach the procurement process.

The sample consists of microenterprises competing for public procurement contracts in Ireland. The data are firstly submitted to principal component analysis to identify a set of factors that represent the public procurement process. This is later used to create four distinct clusters which describe how suppliers interact with the process.

A typology of four interaction patterns is generated from the data. This shows that small firms weight the three phases of the procurement process differently. The data support and extend the argument that small firms are not a homogeneous group and illustrate that small firms use divergent strategies when competing for procurement contracts.

The practical implications of the research include the need to assess the potential for buyer‐supplier mentoring in order to develop relational competency in public procurement. The firms investigated are domiciled in Ireland and therefore generalisability of the findings may be limited. The scope of the study is restricted to micro‐enterprises only.

The paper demonstrates that pre‐tender engagement is a necessary condition for small suppliers to achieve above average bid outcomes. The paper offers insights to public buyers, teams and managers as to the importance of engaging with suppliers to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The aim of this paper is to explore the factors that influence buyer decision-making in public procurement. The objective is to better understand the processes and conditions that support different supply arrangements, which maximise SME participation.

The paper uses case study evidence of contract awards across multiple organisational contexts including: a local authority, commercial semi-state, police force, and a tourist agency.

National policy and the role of procurement exerted mixed effects upon the cases. The procurement processes were broadly similar and included cross-functional teams, consideration of trade-offs and market research.

The paper highlights the transition of public organisations toward strategic procurement including supplier engagement.

This offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are also outlined. The concept of practical rationality is used to support the framework.

A normative framework of public procurement decision-making is generated from the cases. Buying complexity and supplier engagement are two conditions that support a 2×2 decision framework. The framework extends efficient and central-buying decisions to include adapted and balanced decisions. This range offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from longitudinal case studies of small firm mentoring relationships in Ireland. The rationale is to explore the gaps between the theory and practice of small firm mentoring.

The paper uses a comparative case study design involving interviews, observation and secondary sources of evidence including business plans.

In contrast to the literature the paper extends the role of mentors in the small firm context as offering direct and indirect support, which reduces uncertainty in order to increase legitimacy of the business entity.

The cases highlight a conflict between the broad theoretical scope of the mentor process vs a narrow role assumed by best practice.

The research presents an opportunity to enhance the pragmatic vs paternalistic perspective of small firm mentoring. The authors argue that for mentoring theory to be useful then a mentor’s role-set in small firms may be wider and should be more direct than mentors in large corporations.

The emergent theoretical framework combines organisational learning and decision-making theories. The paper contributes to the theoretical development of mentoring by extending the range and defining the role of mentors in the context of small firms.

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the extant research on last-mile logistics (LML) models and consider LML’s diverse roots in city logistics, home delivery and business-to-consumer distribution, and more recent developments within the e-commerce digital supply chain context. The review offers a structured approach to what is currently a disparate and fractured field in logistics.

The systematic literature review examines the interface between e-commerce and LML. Following a protocol-driven methodology, combined with a “snowballing” technique, a total of 47 articles form the basis of the review.

The literature analysis conceptualises the relationship between a broad set of contingency variables and operational characteristics of LML configuration (push-centric, pull-centric, and hybrid system) via a set of structural variables, which are captured in the form of a design framework. The authors propose four future research areas reflecting likely digital supply chain evolutions.

To circumvent subjective selection of articles for inclusion, all papers were assessed independently by two researchers and counterchecked with two independent logistics experts. Resulting classifications inform the development of future LML models.

The design framework of this study provides practitioners insights on key contingency and structural variables and their interrelationships, as well as viable configuration options within given boundary conditions. The reformulated knowledge allows these prescriptive models to inform practitioners in their design of last-mile distribution.

Improved LML performance would have positive societal impacts in terms of service and resource efficiency.

This paper provides the first comprehensive review on LML models in the modern e-commerce context. It synthesises knowledge of LML models and provides insights on current trends and future research directions.

This article focuses on researching quality of life in old age. Based on a review of the relevant literature, it argues that research has not reflected sufficiently the multifaceted nature of quality of life and has relied too much on the judgements of professionals rather than older people. It concludes that quality of life research in general has under‐emphasised the importance of material factors in people's lives. With regard to older people, research shows that relatively poor quality of life, as reported by older people themselves, is associated with only a minority and, among this minority, twice the proportion of older women to men. The article ends with an outline of the new Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Growing Older Research Programme on Extending Quality Life, which in three years time promises to provide usable information for policy makers and practitioners about the determinants of quality of life in old age.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the ESRC's Growing Older Programme and to outline some of the challenges it is facing. I will also put the Programme in context so that its aims, ambitions and potential can be understood. The article opens with a few words about the demographic pressures that overarch this programme and which were influential in its conception.

This paper aims to examine the factors that drive the career progression of construction project managers (CPM) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Based on the quantitative approach, the views of 80 CPMs working with D1 building construction firms were elicited using a structured questionnaire. Data was analysed using one-sample t-test, which was used to examine the relative significance of the variables. The mean scores, standard deviations and significance values (p-values) of each variable were used to examine the outcome of the survey.

The findings suggest that “existence of organizational support systems”, “ability to create identity”, “having an influential mentor and coach”, “accepting complicated and high visibility assignments” and “ability to gain managerial or leadership experience” are the key factors that drive the career progression of CPMs in Ghana.

Findings from this study is limited to CPMs, specifically within the Ghanaian construction industry. This implies that with the fragmented nature of the construction industry, adopting these findings in construction settings within other countries may not yield the desired results, especially, if those countries do not share similar characteristics and context with Ghana.

Practically, this study highlights for the benefits of project managers (PM) (especially those in the construction industry) the key factors that drive their career progressions. Identification of these drivers offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers in the construction industry.

Empirical research on the factors that drive the career progression of CPMs has not been fully examined in previous studies, though such studies in other sectors aside construction are prevalent. Hence, the identification of the drivers for career progression of construction PMs advances literature in the area and offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine where and how coaching and mentoring disciplines overlap or differ in approach. Coaching and mentoring have emerged as important interventions as the role of helping relationships have gained prominence in human resource development. However, there appear to be contexts where one or other is preeminent, without consistent explanation of their suitability. Such inconsistency arguably creates confusion and doubt about these interventions and their efficacy notably amongst those who commission such interventions and their potential beneficiaries. This study focuses on this inconsistency of coaching or mentoring by exploring practitioners’ approaches within six disciplines: executive coaches, coaching psychologists, sports coaches, mentors of leaders, mentors of newly qualified teachers and mentors of young people, with the aim of assisting those seeking support with development.

This exploratory study was undertaken using a qualitative methodology, where in-depth interviews were completed with experienced practitioners to elucidate their approaches and practice.

The findings show that approaches may be discipline-specific, where practitioners specialise in a particular type of coaching or mentoring requiring distinctive knowledge and/or skills. However, the sharing of good practice across disciplines and the value of understanding the common dimensions which emerged is also evident, providing clients and those who commission coaching and mentoring with reassurances regarding the nature of these helping relationships.

As the research focused only on the practitioners’ experiences of their work in these disciplines, it is vital that the mentees’ and coachees’ experiences are captured in future research. There is also value in further exploration of the model developed.

By deploying the model concerned with the future development of these interventions suggests practitioners can expand their capacity and scope by adopting interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.

By directly exploring the shared and distinctive approaches of coaching and mentoring practitioners in six contexts, this study provides opportunities to understand where practitioners can benefit from imparting best practice across these interventions and highlighting specific aspects for their context.