Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of connections between sustainability policy goals included in public procurement tenders and offers and their achievement through contract award.

Two hypotheses based on extant literature and the inducement–contribution theory were tested by means of a survey of 281 procurement files from 2007 to 2009 relating to eight product categories and four European Union (EU) member states. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings indicate that public procurement was more effective in influencing socially responsible goals than environmental goals. In terms of supplier readiness, vendors achieved greater progress in delivering green than socially responsible operations.

The collection and analysis of data are based on procurement files, which is a new but also a complex procedure. In comparison to survey data, the data from procurement file analysis are less biased.

Public procurement practitioners and sustainability policymakers should consider the use of public procurement as a lever to attain environmental and socially responsible goals.

Evidence has been provided to demonstrate the strategic use of public procurement impacts on environmental and socially responsible goals, thereby benefiting society.

This study contributes in three main ways: first, by adding to existing, limited research on the use of public procurement as a lever of policy goals attainment; second, by examining environmental and socially responsible policy in one study; and third, through providing evidence across EU member states.

Given the complexity of green public procurement, decisions are likely to be driven by bounded rationality. However, we know little about what determines supplier selection criteria in any given situation. This study explores buyer behavior when considering environmental criteria. We first conducted interviews and identified 12 operational procedures used by buyers. We then developed a survey to explore the use of these procedures. Our quantitative analysis suggests that public buyers are motivated by their belief that they can make a difference. This is independent of buyers' experience or gender. However, their occupational position and the nature of a procurement seem to influence how buyers seek information about environmental criteria and which information source(s) they use. The data suggest that four specific decision-making heuristics are associated with the selected operational procedures.

This paper aims to examine the influence of records management on the performance of procurement management units (PMUs) in Tanzania.

To meet the objective of the study, cross-sectional survey design and quantitative approaches were used for data collection and analysis. Preliminary analysis of the data was carried out using descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling was then used to analyse the influence of records management standards on procurement performance. The data were collected from 164 government PMUs in Tanzania.

The findings revealed that records management attributes significantly affect procurement performance in Tanzania. Furthermore, government policy and integrity factors confound the association between records management and procurement performance.

The policymakers and practitioners of public procurement are required to be aware of records management principles and how each related factor influences the performance of PMUs. They should emphasise proper storage and housing, equipment, arrangement and access and implement electronic records management.

This study shows how the ISO 15489 model can be applied to public procurement processes. This study also provides the lesson that procurement records need to be protected to ensure their authenticity, reliability, integrity and useability.

This paper presents the outcome of research related to application of formal rules and standard procedures in EAsʼ procurement of goods and services for foreign aid-funded projects. Executing agencies are entrusted to implement foreign aid-funded projects on behalf of respective governments and they are required to satisfy a combination of rules of their multiple principals, mainly donor organizations and respective government ministries. The theoretical framework of this study is guided by agency theory. The findings indicate that the processing of procurement related information and awarding contracts by the executing agencies in the context of Bangladesh is heavily dependent on the informal working systems or “unwritten ground rules”. These are driven by downward hierarchical verbal and non-verbal instructions. The study has adopted a qualitative method following a grounded theory approach.

One of the major methods to promote small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in public procurement is to split tenders into lots. The basic assumption is that SMEs have better chances of awarding smaller or more specialized contracts. This paper aims to investigate whether this widely accepted assumption is correct.

This article examines four hypotheses about the factors that influence SME success in public procurement. The empirical analysis uses real data from 380 contract award files and logistic regression to test the hypotheses.

The results show that a higher number of lots in a tender does not significantly increase the success rate of SMEs, and other factors, including the type of public procurement procedure, the number of participating companies and the overall tender volume, significantly influence SME success.

There are several implications for theory and practice, including the need to further strengthen the academic evaluation of public procurement policies, the suggestion to implement SME support instruments in public legislation with the utmost caution in practice and the managerial indication that SME competitiveness is more relevant to their success in public bidding than public support policies.

The findings stand in fundamental contrast to the legal regulations, which postulate that lots are the driving force for SME promotion in public procurement. This is also in contrast to public procurement policies that, for many years, have recommended splitting contracts into smaller lots to become SME-friendly.

The aim of the present study is to investigate and analyze Internet‐related consumer music procurement behavior and its effects on traditional music procurement using a Web questionnaire with a sample of more than 4,000 Internet users (the word “procurement”, as opposed to purchase, is used because some procurement satisfies the consumers’ need for music but they do not pay for it). Four motive factors for the willingness to pay for online music were found and subsequent cluster analysis identified three meaningful and distinct downloader groups who are willing to pay for online music: demanding downloaders; general download approvers; procurement autonomous. Consumer price sensitivity for two different commercial online‐music distribution models was very similar and the majority of users had similar ideas as to how much a commercial download service should cost. Implications for marketing research and practitioners are discussed.

Performance-Based Contracting (PBC) is widely accepted as a useful tool. It is believed that the use of PBC can assist the efficient utilization of the public resources. The objective of this research is to assess the extent of PBC application and the obstacles to applying it in the public procurement systems of developing countries. Interviews and factual analysis of procurement guidelines and contracts are used to collect data for this research. The analysis results indicate that the majority of public organizations have not yet used PBC even though it is allowed by the law. This is due partly to lack of clarity in the procurement laws and lack of capacity to use PBC.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had severe effects on economies worldwide and, in particular, on public institutions that must keep their operations running while supply chains are interrupted. The purpose of this study is to examine how public institutions act during a pandemic to ensure the security of supply.

The distinct focus is if, why and how public institutions have adopted additive manufacturing (AM) – a production technology colloquially known as three-dimensional printing in which a product is created by joining raw material layer by layer based on a digital model (computer-aided design [CAD] file) of the product – in reaction to supply disruptions caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. For this purpose, four cases within the context of the pandemic supply disruption are used as the units of analysis.

The findings are twofold: public institutions reacted, on the one hand, with a behavioral solution approach, trying to solve the supply disruption with new or changed forms of cooperation and collaboration. On the other hand, public institutions used a technical solution approach (TSA) as a supply disruption response and intensified their use of AM.

This research derives an implications model that focuses on the TSA. Considering the ex ante and ex post phases of the disruption, several effects of AM on resilience are identified. The most relevant is the long-term learning effect (i.e. AM data created during this disruption might also help in a new disruption).

Practitioners who act under extreme pressure and uncertainty are informed by cases that have managed to close bottleneck situations with either a behavioral or TSA. Specific strategies are given for how public buyers could use AM within a pandemic situation to mitigate supply bottlenecks, such as increasing their robustness by localizing sourcing and increasing agility by combining traditional and additive supply sources. Additionally, insights are provided into how public organizations can increase their level of preparedness by including disruption paragraphs, establishing CAD databases, in contract clauses and keeping reserve contracts with AM service providers.

This research contrasts behavioral and technical solution concepts for a pandemic in the public sector. Thus, it provides insights into the relative benefits of AM and causes and effect with regard to how AM affects supply robustness and agility.

This paper will consider the rationale and effectiveness of SMEsupport policies in the award of public procurement (PP) contracts. One group of economic justifications for SME policies derives from the notion that awarding PP contracts to SMEs (and micro-enterprises) encourages innovation, entrepreneurship and so contributes to job creation, economic growth and can support local and regional developments to the benefit of wider society. The link between SMEs, innovation and economic growth has often been assumed in PP policy-making. While some studies show higher growth rates in small than larger firms, others indicate, to the contrary, that many micro and small enterprises, and particularly informal businesses, are not actively seeking to grow. This paper will assess how effective SME policies may be, and questions the extent to which they are properly evaluated.

Universal Public Purchasing Certification Council (UPPCC) is an independent nonprofit entity formed to govern and administer the Certified Public Purchasing Officers (CPPO) and Certified Professional Public Buyers (CPPB) certification programs. Periodically, UPPCC performs a job analysis study to ensure that the certification exams are aligned with the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed for successful job performance in public procurement. This article provides a brief summary of the 2007 job analysis study.