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An important aspect of good governance is a well-managed government procurement system. This has a direct impact on the extent and quality of a country's infrastructure and the effectiveness of its public services. Two key principles underpin a well-managed procurement system: value for money from the goods, services, and public works, which are procured, and fair access to procurement opportunities. Arguably, competition and transparency in the procurement process are necessary conditions for both. Yet despite this, most of the states of Southeast Asia have been reluctant to create an openly competitive and transparent government procurement system. This has been in part reflected in the fact that none them have become signatories to the WTO's Government Procurement Agreement of 1994 with the notable exception of Singapore. This Agreement seeks to promote international access to the government procurement market in goods, services, and public works by mandating open competition and transparent procedures.

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.

Public procurement is widely used to promote objectives of an economic, environmental and social nature, such as the economic development of disadvantaged social groups. This article elaborates a detailed taxonomy of such “horizontal” policies. This study is valuable, first, to facilitate analysis of the practical phenomenon of horizontal policies and of the policy implications of different approaches and, second, to illuminate and develop the relevant regulatory frameworks under national and international regimes. The taxonomy is based on three key distinctions between the following: 1. policies limited to securing compliance with legal requirements and those that go beyond such requirements; 2. policies applied only to the contract awarded and those that go beyond it; and 3. nine different mechanisms by which policies are implemented in the procurement process.

E‐government procurement (E‐GP) can improve the traditional government procurement process. E‐GP can help decrease corruption. This research aims to present the factors of E‐GP that can create good governance in government procurement through e‐auction.

A survey was conducted with Thai public managers who are involved in e‐government procurement. The sample size is 169 professionals representing 67 government agencies.

There are five factors that enhance governance procurement. These relate to the transparent e‐procurement process, committed public managers and political officials, honest vendors, and specific policies and regulations. A transparent e‐procurement process has a positive effect on good governance practice, increasing cost effectiveness and accountability, and decreasing collusion among vendors. Vendor honesty has a negative impact on collusion. Supportive policy and regulations requirements improve cost effectiveness, accountability, and law enforcement.

E‐GP is not a guarantor of enhanced governance and reduced corruption. It requires a dedicated commitment to strong rule enforcement and penalties to achieve successful implementation of e‐government procurement.

Using a wide range of government agencies, the research addresses the best practices e‐government procurement governance and the benefits of good governance in terms of cost effectiveness, accountability, collusion reduction, and stringent law enforcement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the underpinning ideas of public procurement allowed for broader outcomes – a more strategic form of public procurement – to emerge. The paper contributes to the literature on public procurement by empirically addressing the evolution of procurement as a government policy lever in New Zealand so as to demonstrate how policy pragmatism can ensure a shift without a complete overhaul of a complex system.

The paper has used a single country case study to examine a recent development in procurement policy. The objectives of the paper are achieved by adopting a unique conceptual framework connecting ideas, sensemaking and bricolage.

The paper provides empirical and conceptual insights about how bricolage, or policy pragmatism, aids in dealing with the constraints of ideational legacies. It demonstrates a particular form of targeting in procurement, common in public administration but not well understood in the procurement field.

Single country case studies lack scientific generalizability. However, they add to the canon of knowledge that is lacking in the field of public procurement in this case. They also provide a stronger starting point for further research especially with respect to comparative studies.

The paper provides an excellent example of the development of procurement policy that is useful for procurement officials from other countries undergoing change or looking to update or create procurement policies. It shows a high-level process of implementation for government priority outcomes from a country well-known for its quality of public management and governance.

New Zealand has significant equity issues especially as related to its indigenous population. Procurement is being used increasingly as a lever to improve equity. This article includes information about New Zealand's uptake of social procurement.

This paper fulfils a need for greater understanding of how policy is “put together” and the dynamics at major points of change or the implications of policy changes. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this case study of procurement policy in New Zealand is original, and the author is aware of no other similar work emanating from New Zealand in the academic journals.

This paper examines the role of government procurement as a social policy mechanism within a multilateral open trading system. Government regulations globally are being transformed to foster more responsible business conduct in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, concern that sustainability may present a discriminatory barrier to trade has stalled the progress of sustainable public procurement (SPP) at the international level, raising questions regarding the role and scope of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) to align taxpayer-funded contracts with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

With a focus on social sustainability, this paper reviews the grey and academic literature to assess the changing landscape of public procurement policy and supply chain legislation in high-income countries.

Frontrunner nations are adopting a mandatory approach to sustainable public procurement and due diligence legislation is elevating supply chain risk from reputational damage to legal liability. While technological innovation and the clean, green production of manufactured goods dominates the sustainable public procurement literature, the social aspects of sustainability poverty, inequality and human rights remain underrepresented.

The scope of this paper is limited to the examination of government procurement covered by the WTO-GPA (2012). Smaller value contracts, under the WTO-GPA thresholds and the category of defence are beyond the scope of the paper.

The paper focusses on the underserved topic of social sustainability in business-to-government (B2G) – business to government – supply chains arguing that for responsible business conduct to become a competitive advantage, it must be more meaningfully rewarded on the demand-side of all taxpayer-funded contracts in organisation for economic co-operation and development countries. The paper introduces the idea of priceless procurement as a mechanism to build system capacity in the evaluation of non-financial sustainability objectives.

To build the capacity to stimulate competition based on social and environmental policy objectives, the paper introduces the concept of priceless procurement in B2G contracts.

There are Increasing applications of e-procurement by government along with active e-commerce by the private sector in an advanced information society. The Korea e-Procurement System (G2B) is recognized as a successful example of substantially enhancing procurement process efficiency by making it transparent and professional. An analytic work is needed to systematically assess the functionality and role of the system. This paper's purpose is the exploratory study on a mature indicator of evaluation of public e-procurement systems. This paper compares Korea’s case with those of the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand to show that in Australia and New Zealand, which are adopting a as dispersive supply method, the e-procurement system is not developed on a large scale in comparison with the US and Korea that are adopting a central supply method. There are some differences among the four countries according to the trait of their procurement institution and base value in terms of capability of system. Different usefulness for e-procurement depends on the public procurement institution in each country. This paper suggests that eprocurement systems can be used helping purchasing goods and services most reasonably. This paper can help us evaluating substantial value of eprocurement system clearly.

State governments have begun to introduce various eprocurement tools to improve inefficient and ineffective procurement management; however, few empirical studies have documented the diffusion of e-procurement. This study uses data collected from state procurement agencies to examine which e-procurement tools state governments are using as well as to explore what factors affect the adoption of these tools. This study confirms that simple innovations are more rapidly diffused than those that are technically or legally complex. State governments that are more likely to adopt e-procurement tools tend to be larger, managerially innovative, and to have a strong centralized procurement office. Overall, e-procurement is promising technology, but managerial and technical challenges still remain.

This article examines the development of the Internet and electronic procurement or e-procurement in American state governments. I am interested in discerning the extent of adoption of e-procurement, especially as it relates to the use of the Internet in the procurement function. Specifically, eprocurement is examined with data from a national survey of state procurement officers. The first part of this article demonstrates an e-government growth model as a way of modeling the development of e-procurement. The second part examines the existing literature on e-procurement development and challenges associated with its implementation. The third part constructs an eprocurement index, which measures the adoption rate of electronic procurement in each of the states. This e-procurement index is tested against management, organizational, and economic predictor variables. The results of the eprocurement model indicated positive support for electronic procurement on state management capacity and IT management capacity, indicating that high performing management is a critical catalyst for e-procurement development.

Many countries worldwide have identified e‐procurement as a priority of e‐government agenda and have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, e‐procurement systems. The purpose of this paper is to understand the challenges of e‐procurement implementation in the government sector and efforts taken to overcome the challenges, using a Malaysia government case.

This study adopts a qualitative case study approach of an e‐procurement project, which is one of Malaysia's e‐government initiatives. Data were collected using a triangulation approach that involved semi‐structured interviews, document reviews and observation.

The theoretical framework draws on Croom and Brandon‐Jones and was further developed during data analysis. Findings show that challenges of e‐procurement implementation in government sector are not only related to software integration, data management and roll‐out strategy, but also to legal and administration procedures, information technology (IT) infrastructure, outsourcing contract and IT skills. Findings show the importance of creating an IT facilities centre in rural areas and working closely with a third‐party vendor for users' training and skills development.

The findings extend key issues of e‐procurement implementation using a case study in the Malaysia government. The paper highlights the need to understand challenges and limitations faced by a developing countries such as Malaysia in implementing e‐government projects. The paper provides a basis for further thought and analysis on important issues such as lack of IT infrastructure and skills, as well as high dependency on third‐party developers that needs to be overcome in order to gain the impact of an e‐procurement system.

This paper has explored implementation issues of e‐procurement in government sectors, particularly in developing countries, and hence provides guidelines for future implementation strategy for system developers, government officials and ministry.

Only limited studies examine the implementation issues of e‐procurement in the government sector, especially in developing countries. While current studies focus more on the readiness of implementing e‐procurement, this study posits to understand the challenges faced by a developing country in e‐procurement implementation.