Can public procurement be strategic? A future agenda proposition

Pages295-321
Published date04 November 2019
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-09-2018-0032
Date04 November 2019
AuthorPatricia Guarnieri,Ricardo Corrêa Gomes
Subject MatterPublic policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management,Government,Economics,Public finance/economics,Taxation/public revenue
Can public procurement be
strategic? A future agenda
proposition
Patricia Guarnieri and Ricardo Corrêa Gomes
Department of Administration, Faculty of Economics, Administration,
Accounting and Public Policies Management, Universidade de Brasilia,
Brasilia, Brazil
Abstract
Purpose This paperaims to demonstrate how public procurementcan be strategic.
Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted following the
protocol from Pagani,Kovaleski and Resende (2015), called Methodi Ordinatio,to select the relevant literature
on this topic. The analysisof papers selected was carried out following the proceduresof categorical content
analysis(Bardin, 1977).
Findings In all, 68 full paperswere analyzed from Science Direct and Web of Science.The results present
the main characteristics of publications analyzed and the authors propose some categories of strategic
practices related to public procurementthat are in turn related to: sustainability, partnerships and supplier
management,information systems and technology and other issues.
Research limitations/implications The main limitations of this paper are: the publication period
considered of the articles selected is from January 2012 to March 2017; the databases Science Direct and Web of
Science are selected as the sources of articles; the Methodi Ordinatio is used as the basic protocol of the SLR and,
consequently, the inclusion and exclusion criteria described in the steps of the protocol are used.
Practical implications Showing how the publicprocurement can be strategic, this paper highlights the
benets of best procurement practices; similarly, it highlights thosepractices adopted by the private sector,
which can highly contribute to the creation of value in public services that are aligned with the concept of
obtainingthe best value for money.
Social implications The incorporationof strategic practices in public procurement can result in the best
expenditureof public resources and the reduction of corruptionin the process of procurement.
Originality/value This paper contributesto synthesize the knowledgeon strategic procurement, a topic
exploited by few people in the public organizations. It differentiates from other literature reviews already
published, considering thatthese studies do not deal, specically, with public procurement and, also,do not
use protocols of SLR. Moreover, thispaper indicates a future agenda of research, which can aid researchers
and practitionersacting in this eld of knowledge.
Keywords Partnerships, Acquisition, Environmental and social issues,
Procurement/purchasing processes, Strategic procurement/purchasing, Supplier management
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Erridge and Murray (1998) alreadyhighlighted that the perception of public purchasing as a
clerical and order placing function can be considered the main barrier to improve and
implement practices similar to those found in the private companies. Public procurement
has not reached the theoreticalboundaries of public management or strategic management
yet (Matthews, 2005). Privateand public procurement are clearly different, mainly relatedto
goals. While private companies are aimed to maximize prot, the public organizations are
Can public
procurement
be strategic?
295
Received11 September 2018
Revised27 March 2019
Accepted20 May 2019
Journalof Public Procurement
Vol.19 No. 4, 2019
pp. 295-321
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1535-0118
DOI 10.1108/JOPP-09-2018-0032
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1535-0118.htm
more focused to integrate ethical, social, environmental, economic, democratic, professional
and person-relatedissues (Kernaghan, 2003;Purchase et al., 2009;Larson,2009).
In this context, the most rational choice, that is, the one that minimizes costs, is not always
the most reasonable. In some cases, it is necessary to prioritize other factors such as social ones
in a procurement process, which very often are less economic, aiming at the social inclusion and
generation of income. Another difference between private and public procurement is related to
legislation. Public bidders are restricted to what the legislation allows, while private companies
are free to choose the most advantageous option, under less limitations.
Complementarily, one of the main problems in public procurement is related to the
guarantee of suppliers selectionthrough a transparent process instead of on the grounds of
politics, favoritism or fraud. In this sense, some problems related to poorly managed
purchasing processcontributes to the non-delivery of value in public services.
In general, the legislation regulating procurement imposes some restrictions on bidders
(Gugler et al.,2015). It is important to emphasize that if the quality of the good to be sold is
not certain, then price competitionwill provide the poorest types of goods. In the context of
the UK, Erridge and Murray (1998) already found that there was an increased interest of
government on benets of best procurement practices, along with private sector practices.
These practices can highly contribute to the creation of value in public services that are
aligned with the conceptof obtaining the best value for money.
To the best of our knowledge, there are no papers dealing with strategic public
procurementor using the methodological procedures of systematic literature review (SLR)
and bibliometric analysis on this topic. However, there are some related papers based on
literature reviewsthat should be detached.
Zheng et al. (2007) analyzed 42 relevantempirical studies on the future of purchasing and
supply management and found changes in business contexts, purchasing strategy,
structure, role and responsibility, system development and skills. The authors also
examined the variation by sector, rm type, peoples roles in purchasing and country.
Arlbjørn and Freytag (2012) conducted in depth literature reviews to compare public and
private sectors and analyze the possibility for mutual learning and value, besides
identifying driversand barriers for benchmarks between the two sectors.
Chicksand et al. (2012) explored the question that to what extent is theory used in
purchasing and supply chainmanagement research through literature review. Besides,they
investigate what are the prevalent theories and if the theory-based papers are more highly
cited than papers with no theory and, nally, investigate to what extent does procurement
and supply chain management meet the tests of coherence, breadth and depth and quality
necessary to make it a scienticdiscipline.
This paper differentiates from those mentioned above because it is focused on the topic
of public purchasingand the ways it can be strategic; besides that, it uses a structured
protocol for systematically reviewing the literature, indicating possible avenues to future
research on this issue.
In this context, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate how strategic public
procurement can be strategic. To achieve this purpose, a SLR of papers published in past ve
years was conducted, following the protocol from Pagani et al. (2015) called Methodi Ordinatio.
This protocol was selected because it presents well-dened steps and a rigorous
procedure to select the papers for a SLR, which considers the year of publication of the
paper, the number of citations obtained since its publication and the journal impact factor,
based on a multi-criteria decision aid approach, to soften the subjectivity inherent to the
choice of the nal sample of papers to be analyzed.These elements generate an index called
InOrdinatio (IO),which allows to rank the papers by relevance.
JOPP
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