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Purchasing management has been recently focused by public organisations aiming to maximise its contribution to operations. Such an aspect has been emphasised by the impacts of on going commercialisation process in the network public service sector. This paper provides evidence of changes in purchasing management behaviour in public firms in the water supply sector. In particular, in Italy the firms, after a first phase of increasing attention to purchasing management and suppliers selection, slowly has come back to a clerical approach, maintaining an “arms-length” relationship with suppliers. A model for describing the oscillation of purchasing management within the firms is presented and an explanation of such an oscillation is suggested in terms of flow of power between technical management and political managers.

The public sector purchasing function continues to face growing pressures to reform current purchasing processes. Yet, little is known about the abilities of purchasing professionals to adapt to this rapidly changing environment. This article identifies the critical job duties and work responsibilities of government purchasing buyers and officers in an attempt to determine if they currently posses the knowledge, skills, and abilities to successfully adapt to increased pressures for reform.

This article revisits two vital questions largely ignored in the scholarly literature devoted to professionalism in government. First, is the public purchaser a professional? And second, is public purchasing a profession? Our reexamination of the first question led us to conclude that a public purchaser that meets certain requirements in government purchasing practices distinct from traits reserved for recognized traditional professions such as law, medicine and clergy can be a professional. Furthermore, when we analyzed the basic criteria that characterized a profession such as the existence of esoteric knowledge, rigorous formal training, codes of ethics, representative association, autonomy in practice, and criteria for admission into the occupation, we concluded that public purchasing is a profession.

The purpose of this paper is to study the reform of public purchasing directives initiated by the European Union (EU) and discuss them in light of the criticism against existing public purchasing directives.

A literature review of empirical articles is critical to existing public purchasing directives to summarize the main directions and categories of their criticism, and a thorough reading of the proposed reform of the public purchasing directives is carried out to see if the changes will answer some or all of the criticism directed toward the public purchasing directives.

The reforms seem to be a step in the right direction, particularly with respect to public organizations possibility to support innovation and new product and service development, but little change in the possibilities for development of strategic, long-term relationships.

The reform has just been introduced, and so the analysis of the possible effects of the reform is not based on empirical data (since such data do not exist yet), but mostly on the authors experience in the field and through a comparison with selected literature.

An early assessment of the possible effects of the reform regarding public procurement directives in the EU area is introduced.

Cooperative purchasing is beginning to receive renewed attention by scholars and practitioners alike in both the private and public sectors. Generally, cooperative purchasing arrangements have been reported to reduce costs, expedite transactions, and increase product knowledge. In the public sector, cooperative purchasing has been reported to reduce political risk, minimize “red-tape,” and, in some cases, avoid all reported social equity goals that are reported to increase costs. In this article, we contend that the lack of conceptual clarity has marred the literature on cooperative public sector purchasing, and as a result public sector purchasers have no theoretical guidelines to help them decide upon this purchasing mechanism. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to use agency theory to analyze, define, and establish a conceptual framework of cooperative public purchasing to help guide academics and practicing public sector purchasing professionals.

Procurement systems in democratic governments across the globe face competing demands, conflated values and goals, and are being called upon to address societies "wicked" problems under the rubric of government "reform." As a result, government purchasing professionals are being challenged to develop new flexible structures and processes that devolve purchasing responsibility, yet maintain accountability and control; limit the opportunity for fraud/mismanagement while reducing operational constraints; increase economic efficiency while satisfying political demands for minority/local/small and women owned business participation; increase open and transparent competition while achieving best value; and applying best practices while confronting legal limitations. Essentially these dilemmas have placed public procurement at the forefront of government reform efforts. The current study delineates the nature of five dilemmas that purchasing practitioners face, and the implications of these dilemmas for purchasing in the public sphere are explored. Given the complexity of these dilemmas, procurement professionals will be continually called upon to balance these inherent tensions with little guidance from policymakers or elected officials.

The literature suggests public procurement professionals have different perspectives on supply chain management (SCM) vis-à-vis their private sector counterparts. Based on a recent survey of Canadian purchasers, this paper presents an empirical comparison of public vs. private views on SCM. The questionnaire is structured around a set of 54 topics, tools and techniques; along with four perspectives on the relationship between purchasing and SCM. Important findings from this survey of SCM professionals include: (1) public procurement professionals have narrow perspectives on SCM compared to their private sector counterparts; and (2) public sector professionals have different perceptions regarding the importance of topics, tools and techniques to support their performance on the job.

This paper analyzes how German municipalities organize their purchasing activities. It aims to identify patterns in the structure of the purchasing function and to study how the size of the municipality influences the design of its purchasing organization. Therefore, an analytical framework based on contingency and organization theory is developed and results of an empirical study are presented. The results indicate that German municipalities use a medium level of centralization and specialization in organizing their purchasing activities, but that the purchasing process is highly formalized and represented on high hierarchical levels in many cases. As to the relationship between the size of a municipality and the structure of its purchasing function, the study indicates that size, measured by the number of inhabitants, the number of employees and purchasing volume influences the structural variables in various ways.

Public procurement is important in itself but is also an important intervening force in some business networks. Two aspects are of particular interest. The first is that public purchasing is an important ingredient in public policy in relation to a number of business networks; it is substantial in areas such as transportation, communication, health care and defence, where the ‘public’ is often the most dominating actor. As such it can be one of the measures in innovation policies, as well as in regional and local development policies. The second aspect is that public purchasing is highly regulated by law, based mostly on the assumption of ‘homogeneous, competitive, product markets’. That restricts public procurement in forming close and continuous supplier relationships, thus making more effective use of these relationships, particularly for development purposes. A consequence is that suppliers’ capabilities cannot be used in the same way as in the private sphere. The chapter concludes with a discussion of current developments in regulation that allow closer collaboration with suppliers and the likely benefits, a feature that has been evidenced in prior Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) research.

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.