Determinants of Public Procurement Performance in Kenya

by Open Science Repository Business Administration
(October 2013)

Abstract


Public procurement has always been a big part of the developing countries’ economy accounting for 40% of their GDP. However, concerns on the way in which public organizations use the resources that are given to them has often raised doubts that value for money has not been realized. The overall problem in this study was that despite the fact that there has been reforms initiative in the public procurement system in Kenya since mid-1990s, the government still lost billions of money through procurement irregularities with the Ministry of Water and Irrigation leading by 38% of the reported cases in 2010/2011and 33% in 2011/2012. The overall objective was to explore determinants of public procurement performance in Kenya. The specific objectives included the effect of the legal framework on procurement performance, to establish how professional ethics affects procurement performance in Kenya, to ascertain how ICT affects procurement performance in Kenya, determine the influence of senior management support on procurement performance in Kenya and establish the moderating effect of government policy on public procurement performance in Kenya. This study took on a descriptive design approach. It was conducted at the Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources headquarters. The respondents were sampled from all the departments within the Ministry. The office has 11 departments with a total of three hundred and twenty members of staff at the head office that constituted the target population of the study. The study sampled 25% of the population totaling 80 respondents. The study utilized questionnaires and unstructured observation in data collection. It conducted data collection systematically beginning with seeking permission from the relevant authorities through sample determination, actual data collection all the way to data analysis and presentation. The study adopted both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques. Data was edited after collection, classified and analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft Word tools, interpreted and presented using tables, graphs, narrations and statistical tools. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was utilized in the analyzing and presenting of data. The major findings were that legal framework, management support; professional ethics, ICT and government policies are strongly correlated with procurement performance in Kenya with correlation coefficients of 0.959, 0.919, 0.879, 0.839 and 0.799 respectively.

Keywords: public procurement, professional ethics, information communications technology, supply chain management.

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Determinants of Public Procurement Performance in Kenya

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