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Despite the fact that students in higher education contributes significantly to the number of professionals, little has been done to incorporate the students’ perspectives on the status of procurement and supply professions in Tanzania. This study examined the challenges confronting the procurement and supply professions from the perspective of future procurement professionals enrolled in Tanzanian higher education.

A cross-sectional design was used to collect data from undergraduate students majoring in procurement and supply chain management in Tanzanian higher education using a structured questionnaire.

The findings revealed that the challenges affecting the procurement and supply professions were buyer- and supplier-related challenges as perceived by Tanzanian higher education students.

The study's findings should be generalized with caution because the findings represent the perspectives of Tanzanian procurement and supply undergraduate business students. Furthermore, the included sample of procurement and supply undergraduates cannot represent all students' perceptions; thus, other studies may broaden the sample by including the opinions of other higher education students.

This is the first study that looks at how students in higher education institutions, who are considered future procurement and supply professionals, perceive the challenges of the procurement and supply professions in Tanzania.

This study aims to examine the influence of procedural capabilities for public procurement participation on small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) sales performance in Tanzania. Also, the study establishes the interaction effect of internet marketing capabilities on the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis and PROCESS macro for simple interaction analysis to analyse cross-sectional data that were obtained through questionnaire from surveyed SMEs’ managers. The included SMEs are those that are involved in supplying goods, services and works to public entities in Dodoma, Tanzania.

The findings reveal that procedural capabilities for participation in public procurement enhance SMEs to improve sales performance. Also, there is a significant and positive relationship between internet marketing capabilities and sales performance. Lastly, internet marketing capabilities strengthen the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

This study is a wake-up call to SMEs to better comprehend public procurement procedures and e-business practices to use the available public procurement opportunities. It is argued that SMEs should invest in technology to market their businesses through social media and online platforms. According to the study, SMEs may benefit from improving their sales performance by fully utilising their internet marketing capabilities and participating in public procurement opportunities.

This study adds to the two main streams of literature that emphasise harnessing public procurement opportunities for SMEs (through public procurement participation) and leveraging internet marketing capabilities for SMEs to improve their sales performance.

Whilst the role that procurement plays in today’s organisations is becoming increasingly strategic, recruitment into the discipline in Australia remains a significant challenge, and this has led to a serious ongoing skills shortage. By combining the findings from an online survey of Australian practitioners, with a set of face-to-face interviews with procurement recruitment specialists, the purpose of this paper is to establish a set of possible reasons for the skills shortage, before making suggestions as to how this shortage may be addressed.

This empirical study combines the findings from an online practitioner survey with structured interviews with recruitment age]ncies. Mixed method approaches like this give researchers an opportunity to combine different research design elements, from individual mono-methods, in an attempt to address research questions in a more detailed manner.

The procurement professionals participating in the online survey underlined an ability to manage relationships, working effectively with individuals and teams/groups, managing risk, legal knowledge and an understanding of how procurement connects with the other disciplines within an organisation, as being the most critical skills needed by a procurement professional. With no direct pathway into this profession from higher education, the recruitment agencies intimated that finding graduates who were trained and prepared for this career was challenging, in an area where young skilled professionals are direly needed. Interestingly, whilst a number of practitioners indicated a “lack of professional experience/workplace awareness” as being a barrier to graduate employment in this profession, when asked whether the organisation they worked for had a graduate programme, internship or co-op programme that places students within the workplace, only 30 per cent of those questioned confirmed that they did.

These findings extend the existing body of literature, identify a number of gaps and underline the need for continued research into this strategically significant profession.

The results are of great significance to universities and other degree-awarding higher education institutions, highlighting a demand for skilled graduates in an area that is not currently serviced by existing educational packages, presenting a possible future market opportunity. There are additional implications for human resource managers, practitioners and policy makers, and this research raises awareness of the need for change.

The procurement discipline is attracting an increasing level of academic interest, but there are a lack of studies exploring the reasons behind the talent issues experienced by firms recruiting into this discipline. This paper directly addresses the talent shortage and is the first research to discuss that the lack of a clear career pathway between higher education, and the procurement profession, might be one of the key factors.

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.

This Symposium reports on the opportunities available to those who take the initiative to introduce materials management approaches. It examines both the anticipate rates of change and development of the underlying factors as well as the organisational implications they entail. A full bibliography of recent literature is provided. The predicted developments are derived from the findings of a Delphi Study in association with the Institute of Purchasing and Supply conducted by the author in 1976.

As government organizations step hopefully into a new century, among the challenges they face will be the demands of the “New Purchasing” and persistent pressure to redefine the role of the purchasing practitioner in government. Reengineering of purchasing activities was a constant feature of the 1990s in many government jurisdictions. Those who manage the function usually influence a large share of organizational expenditure and must also cope with the demands of e-commerce, devolution of responsibility, partnering and strategic alliances, and the implications of globalization within the context of an accountable public sector. Applying some theoretical, functionalist models of a profession, this paper seeks to establish professional credentials for purchasing practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the knowledge public procurement professionals perceive as important for performing their duties.

Using secondary data generated from a job analysis study commissioned by the Universal Public Procurement Certification Council [UPPCC], this paper examined the knowledge sets that procurement officials recognize as necessary and sufficient for daily operations and professional development.

Principal Component Analysis is used to validate the six domains of knowledge covered on the survey. This paper identifies sets of core knowledge domains that are essential for procurement administration, including sourcing, negotiation process, contract administration, supply management and strategic procurement planning.

Furthermore, the authors incorporated anecdotal commentary information from the same survey to determine what additional professional development and continuing education opportunities procurement officials are seeking to improve performance in their current and future work roles.

As government responds to demands to become more efficient and effective, procurement professionals are expected to focus primarily on the strategic aspects of procurement and less on routine transactions. In reality, public procurement masks the ability of government to transform taxes and other revenues into consumption by government institutions at federal, state and local levels, ostensibly for the public good. Public purchasers are told by their professional institutions and their private sector peers to be more proactive and less reactive in order to add greater value to their organization. However, tradition has decreed that procurement processes are managed by “unglamorous individuals” (Stewart, 1994) who are required, first and foremost, to satisfy the complex accountability processes of the government, an administrative principle, which is reinforced by recent failures of corporate financial governance. Furthermore, a search of contemporary literature shows little evidence that public procurement has penetrated the theoretical boundaries of public management or strategic management despite the profession's efforts over more than a decade to develop its profile. This paper explores two contemporary dilemmas: the boundaries of public procurement within the context of public administration and the mask of public accountability, which impedes the integration of public procurement into public administration (PA) and strategic theory.

This paper examines the role of theory in public procurement research. Theoretical rigour is integral to management science, yet little is known on the extent and form of theory in public procurement. With the field starting to mature, addressing this issue is timely. From conducting a systematic literature review we find that 29 percent of articles are theoretically grounded, with the incidence of theory having increased in recent years. Economic, sociological, psychological, and management theories are all in evidence, but micro-economic theories predominate. Our findings also show that survey reporting and case studies account for almost half of all studies; procurement research is focused on organizational-level aspects more than regulatory-policy issues or public buyers; and studies to date have largely emanated from the North American and European regions. The contribution of this paper lies in clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of public procurement. Out of this we highlight the need for greater theoretical rigour, point to the under-use and even absence of theories that could have high validity and utility, and suggest a narrowing of research foci.

This paper investigates how organisations are responding to mandatory modern slavery disclosure legislation. Experimentalist governance suggests that organisations faced with disclosure requirements such as those contained in the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 will compete with one another, and in doing so, improve compliance. The authors seek to understand whether this is the case.

This study is set in the UK public sector. The authors conduct interviews with over 25% of UK universities that are within the scope of the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and examine their reporting and disclosure under that legislation.

The authors find that, contrary to the logic of experimentalist governance, universities' disclosures as reflected in their modern slavery statements are persistently poor on detail, lack variation and have led to little meaningful action to tackle modern slavery. They show that this is due to a herding effect that results in universities responding as a sector rather than independently; a built-in incapacity to effectively manage supply chains; and insufficient attention to the issue at the board level. The authors also identity important boundary conditions of experimentalist governance.

The generalisability of the authors’ findings is restricted to the public sector.

In contexts where disclosure under the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 is not a core offering of the sector, and where competition is limited, there is little incentive to engage in a “race to the top” in terms of disclosure. As such, pro-forma compliance prevails and the effectiveness of disclosure as a tool to drive change in supply chains to safeguard workers is relatively ineffective. Instead, organisations must develop better knowledge of their supply chains and executives and a more critical eye for modern slavery to be combatted effectively. Accountants and their systems and skills can facilitate this development.

This is the first investigation of the organisational processes and activities which underpin disclosures related to modern slavery disclosure legislation. This paper contributes to the accounting and disclosure modern slavery literature by investigating public sector organisations' processes, activities and responses to mandatory reporting legislation on modern slavery.