Public policy and financial management through eprocurement: A practice oriented normative model for maximizing transformative impacts

Abstract

Scholars have suggested that the current dynamics within the provision of public services have shaped traditional administration into governance by contract. Under such conditions, restructuring public procurement, specifically within the technological capabilities available within e-procurement, has often been associated with manifold positive financial and policy outcomes. The supposed benefits of digitalizing public procurement are legion, yet they are often assumed and rarely grounded in hard evidence. Based on the results of a survey of procurement specialists (n=499), this article suggests that in its current form e-procurement adoption is failing to uphold the transformative benefits that it is regularly attributed within popular discourse. An extensive literature review is undertaken in order to construct practical understandings of the factors that could explain the rather disappointing early developments. The paper offers a practice oriented normative model that would increase the probability of achieving transformative dynamics as a result of e-procurement adoption.