Policy-led public procurement: does strategic procurement deliver?

Abstract

Public procurement can be leveraged to impact on business, the economy and society to support and can even lead broader government policy implementation (

One crisis, different paths to supply resilience: The case of ventilator procurement for the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Thirdly, to the best of our knowledge this is the first study applying an equifinality perspective in the context of public procurement. We add to research stressing the imperative role of public procurement in responding to crisis situations ( Harland et al, 2021a ; Fearne et al, 2021 ) by showing that public buying organizations such as government departments can make different resource allocation decisions in preparedness for extreme events and still be able to achieve desired outcomes – in this case, avoid ventilator shortages – by employing different strategies at an event's onset.…”

“…The public procurement context is theoretically interesting because, unlike in private sector contracting, procurement professionals are typically constrained by rules, regulations, and norms that can hinder resilience, e.g., impede close collaboration with suppliers and discourage flexibility ( Selviaridis and Spring 2022 ). At the same time, public procurement can be used strategically to help implement public policy goals such as innovation, and to coordinate response to emergency situations ( Harland et al, 2021a ; Selviaridis, 2021 ). In crisis periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have the power to override normal procurement processes, steer public-private collaboration and use more agile approaches to procurement of critical healthcare products and services ( Harland et al, 2021b ; Fearne et al, 2021 ).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, this study is also the first to empirically investigate equifinality in public procurement. We add to research stressing the critical role of public procurement in responding to emergencies (e.g., Harland et al, 2021a ) by unearthing different pathways leading to the same successful outcomes, despite varied approaches to allocation resources in this setting. Despite our focus on public procurement, our results are largely transferable to private-sector procurement settings given that governmental organizations and private-sector firms have some common characteristics as buying organizations e.g., level of procurement centralization.…”

Public procurement during the pandemic: experience of India and China

“…Given the significant share of public procurement in government’s budgets and its distributional consequences particularly in developing countries, it has come to be regarded as a “strategic” tool in policy intervention (Rolfstam, 2009; Kattel and Lember, 2010; Grandia and Meehan, 2017; Snider and Rendon, 2008; Patrucco, 2017; Storsjö and Kachali, 2017; Guarnieri and Gomes, 2019; Harland et al , 2021). At the same time, public procurement policies are often institutionally more demanding than private procurement (Telgen et al , 2012), inefficient (Hunja, 2003; Schapper et al , 2006) and characterized by rent-seeking and high transaction costs (Bosio et al , 2020; Goyal, 2019; Kovacic, 1992).…”

Compra pública sostenible y estratégica: una aproximación al concepto de rendición de cuentas en el proceso de la compra pública sostenible a través de indicadores

“…El potencial de la contratación pública como motor de sostenibilidad no solo se debe a que el sector público es uno de los principales consumidores de productos y servicios estratégicos, como energía, transportes, servicios de salud y educación, entre otros , sino también por ser promotor e impulsor de la sostenibilidad en el sector privado Walker y Brammer, 2009), por fomentar la responsabilidad social de las empresas (Harland et al, 2021), además de impactar en las economías locales mediante la formalización de contratos públicos con empresas de ese ámbito local (Harland et al, 2021). De esta manera, la contratación pública se dispone como una palanca estratégica en el sector privado para la implementación de políticas públicas Harland et al, 2021;.…”