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Academically, public procurement has been a neglected area of study even though governmental entities and public procurement practitioners have diligently worked to improve public procurement practices. This article will identify common elements of public procurement knowledge through a brief analysis of the literature and will provide a summary of government efforts to improve public procurement practices. In addition, this article will comprehensively re-examine public procurement by using a systems approach as a method of inquiry. Finally, implications of the proposed public procurement system regarding future research and study will be discussed.

Government procurement has been a neglected area of study in higher education and research. This symposium is one of the first efforts in examining government procurement. This article will provide a brief overview of government procurement developments and summarize major themes of manuscripts included in the symposium.

Much of the literature on China's ongoing attempts to accede to the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) Agreement on Government Procurement (“GPA”) focuses on which Chinese entities will ultimately be covered by the Agreement. While coverage issues are, no doubt, important, this paper argues that China will face an even greater number of challenges when implementing and harmonizing the requirements of the GPA with its own domestic procurement laws. In particular, the GPA's Article XVIII requirement for an effective domestic review mechanism may be especially difficult for China to achieve. In light of these challenges, this paper argues that current GPA members should address problems with China's domestic legal framework for procurement now, not look to the domestic review device to resolve problems after accession.

This paper maps gender‐related outcomes of the World Trade Organization Government Procurement Code (GPC) by highlighting the role of deskilling in changing labor market rewards for women employed in traditionally feminine service occupations.

The emergence of the “contract state” is examined as a major response to the GPC, one, that generates fragmentation and promotes deskilling in public service jobs. Fragmentation is examined by comparing average income in direct public employment and in public procurement contracts.

In the context of service procurement, previous collective agreements recognizing skill and experience are circumvented generating precarious employment for skilled employees.

The analysis unveils the ways in which the contract state through its prioritization of low‐cost bids, promotes women's deskilling in public services. It contributes to a better understanding of the importance of employees' representatives' active participation in tender committees as well as in long‐term auditing of service contractors.

Developing countries face a problem of making a decision of opening up public procurement markets to all suppliers irrespective of their country of origin. The perceived benefit of opening up procurement markets (non-discriminatory practices) is that it enhances competitiveness, leading to efficient public resources utilisation. Governments discriminating against foreign firms in favour of local suppliers are motivated by the desire to achieve benefits such as, stimulating infant industries, fostering underdeveloped regions and creating employment. This paper examines both arguments and makes recommendations as to how developing countries could open up procurement markets without losing their social and economic objectives.

The purpose of this paper is to make recommendations to address the four limitations of Singapore’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB).

The paper begins by attributing Singapore’s reputation as the least corrupt Asian country to the CPIB’s four strengths: its independence from the police; its adequate staffing and funding; its adoption of the total approach to enforcement; and its impartial enforcement of the anti-corruption laws. It then proceeds to identify the CPIB’s limitations and provides four suggestions to address these limitations.

The sentencing of Edwin Yeo, a senior CPIB officer, to ten years’ imprisonment on 20 February 2014 for misappropriating US$1.76 million for nearly four years reveals that there were weaknesses in the CPIB’s internal controls and procurement procedures in spite of its effectiveness in curbing corruption. This paper recommends that the CPIB addresses its four limitations by strengthening its internal controls and procurement procedures; enhancing public trust and confidence by further improving its outreach to the population; improving the external oversight of its activities; and developing its in-house research capabilities.

This paper will be useful for those scholars, policy-makers, and anti-corruption practitioners who are interested in how the CPIB can further enhance its effectiveness even though Singapore is perceived as the least corrupt Asian country.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate how the governments in six Asian countries have dealt with selected grand corruption scandals.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of 11 corruption scandals examined in the six articles on India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore included in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy.

The responses of the governments in the six countries depend on the strength of their political will in combating corruption. The responses of the governments in Malaysia, Philippines, India and Japan reflect their weak political will in combating corruption and lack of accountability of the corrupt offenders. By contrast, the strong political will of the governments in Singapore and Macau is reflected in the investigation and punishment of the corrupt offenders without any cover-up of the scandals.

The findings would be of interest to scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners and activists.

The purpose of this paper is to compare two corruption scandals in Singapore to illustrate how its government has dealt with these scandals and to discuss the implications for its anti-corruption strategy.

This paper analyses the Teh Cheang Wan and Edwin Yeo scandals by relying on published official and press reports.

Both scandals resulted in adverse consequences for the offenders. Teh committed suicide on 14 December 1986 before he could be prosecuted for his bribery offences. Yeo was found guilty of criminal breach of trust and forgery and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. The Commission of Inquiry found that the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) was thorough in its investigations which confirmed that only Teh and no other minister or public official were implicated in the bribery offences. The Independent Review Panel appointed by the Prime Minister's Office to review the CPIB's internal controls following Yeo's offences recommended improvements to strengthen the CPIB's financial procedures and audit system. Singapore has succeeded in minimising corruption because its government did not cover-up the scandals but punished the guilty offenders and introduced measures to prevent their recurrence.

This paper will be useful for scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners interested in Singapore's anti-corruption strategy and how its government handles corruption scandals.

MCB is not a company to rest on its laurels. In the vernacular of modern‐day management literature, the company can rightly claim to be a learning organization; one that seeks to regenerate and develop itself in accordance with current trends, most notably those in customer and market requirements.

Database design using the technique of Entity‐Relationship (E‐R) modelling has become relatively common since the technique was proposed by Chen in the 1970s. However, there are few reports of the use of the technique in the analysis and design of library databases. Following work done in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Overseas Development Administration (ODA) libraries in an earlier library automation consultancy, E‐R analysis was used to produce diagrammatic representation of library processes from which the requirements of the library were derived and described in an Operational Requirement (OR) issued to the trade. The progress of this work is discussed and some observations are made in the light of suppliers' responses to the OR. The E‐R diagrams derived for the FCO OR are presented together with an explanation of the notation used.