International Journal of Public Sector Management

Improving the validity of public procurement research

J. Gordon Murray
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J. Gordon Murray, (2009),"Improving the validity of public procurement research", International Journal of
Public Sector Management, Vol. 22 Iss 2 pp. 91 - 103
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Public
Improving the validity of public procurement
procurement research research
J. Gordon Murray
IDeA, Lisburn, UK 91
Received 19 September 2007
Abstract Revised 18 December 2007
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue that the fundamental difference between private and Accepted 18 December 2007
public procurement, that of politicians, has been largely overlooked in public procurement strategy
and management research. It then aims to argue that existing public procurement research could be
improved if greater attention were given to in research design to validity and the interface with
Downloaded by Univerzitet u Beogradu At 11:34 19 March 2017 (PT)

politicians.
Design/methodology/approach The research is based on a critical literature review of public
procurement strategy and management literature, examining the methodologies used and roles of
politicians.
Findings The findings suggest there is an in-built bias through over reliance on procurement
managers as the key respondents, tendency to focus on private sector procurement research attributes
and questions, and a tendency to focus on operational as opposed to strategic public procurement
decision making.
Research limitations/implications The research suggests a need for greater understanding of
politicians engagement in public procurement strategy and management and the need for greater
triangulation in public procurement research.
Originality/value The paper highlights how public procurement strategy and management
research can be improved to increase its validity. It explores the neglected area of the role of politicians
in public procurement.
Keywords Public procurement, Management strategy, Research, Politics
Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction
The elevation of procurement to a strategic role has been the focus of considerable
attention since the 1990s. Most of the initial literature was set against the private
sector, and predominately manufacturing industry focussed (for example, Lamming,
1993; Brandes, 1994; Gadde and Hakansson, 1994; Speckman et al., 1994; van Weele,
1994), with comparatively little attention given to the public sector procurement
strategy and management. While the Public Contract Law Journal dates back to 1981
and Public Procurement Law Review to 1992, both had sit within the legal and
regulatory disciplines, it is only in the last decade that public procurement strategy and
management has, however, been recognised as different from that of the private sector
and developed into a research discipline in itself with its own biennial international
conference (Thai et al., 2005; Piga and Thai, 2007), journal, and international research
study on public procurement (Knight et al., 2007a, b). International Journal of Public Sector
This paper illustrates that existing public procurement strategy and management Management
Vol. 22 No. 2, 2009
research may be myopic, suffering from Coxs (1997, p. 29) Tyranny of Experience, pp. 91-103
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3558
The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of IDeA. DOI 10.1108/09513550910934501
 IJPSM paraphrased as assuming that the research methodologies adopted for private sector
22,2 procurement will be appropriate, without adjustment, in the public sector. If that is the
case there may be a need to improve the validity of existing public procurement
strategy and management research approaches.
The paper rests on the platform that at national, supra-national and international
levels public procurement sits within legislative, administrative and judicial
92 frameworks and much of those frameworks have been set by politicians. At that
level, through the development of legal regulation and establishing its precise contents,
the influence of politicians on public procurement policy is pervasive. Clearly at the
public procurement policy level, there is a fundamental and accepted difference
between public procurement and private sector procurement.
However, given that fundamental difference between public procurement and
private sector procurement, the paper argues that, at the level of the organisational
strategy and management, the fundamental difference between private and public
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procurement has been largely overlooked in public procurement research; that of the
voice of democracy, politicians, a major stakeholder in public procurement (Murray,
1999, 2007). As a consequence, there is little understanding of politicians views, even
though Ellram and Carr (1994) advocated that research would be of benefit, which
compares procurements view of itself with that of top management. Furthermore, the
paper argues that research claiming to be on strategic public procurement cannot be
considered strategic if it leaves out the role of politicians; local, regional and national.
The paper therefore discusses why a political perspective is important, suggests that
the gap in research has arisen as a result of researcher myopia leading to bias, and
makes recommendations both for improving the validity of public procurement
strategy and management research and for future research.

Why political procurement is important

There are many facets to the interplay of politicians and procurement managers in
public procurement; this paper only explores democratic accountability, strategic
procurement management, the principal/agent relationship, and the performance
management roles. Other facets exist but it is not necessary to explore those, as if only
one key facet is accepted as overlooked, the core argument is supported and there is
potential for improving the validity of public procurement research.

Democratic accountability
At national, supra-national and international levels public procurement sits within
legislative, administrative and judicial frameworks and much of those frameworks
have been set by politicians. At that level, through the development of legal regulation
and establishing its precise contents, the influence of politicians on public procurement
policy is pervasive. Clearly at the public procurement policy level, there is a
fundamental and accepted difference between public procurement and private sector
procurement. However, at the national, regional and local levels, the public sector
works within a narrower framework of democratic governance strategy and
management; local people exercise their right to determine how and by whom they
should be governed through the ballot box. In turn, those elected not only have a
representative advocacy role, but also take on the responsibility of being
democratically accountable to the electorate for the decisions made under their
 watch (Hill, 1974; Mulgan, 2006; Stoker, 2006; Murray, 1999, 2007; Caldwell et al., 2007, Public
pp. 149-59); at its most visible this can mean a change of government or a politician procurement
having to resign when things go badly wrong.
In the past the public sector delivered most of its services through direct service research
provision; the client and provider were both public servants. However, politicians have
had a shift to what Osborne and Gaebler (1993) refer to as steering not rowing.
Steering relates to policy and ends, while rowing is concerned with the means of 93
service delivery. Elected members steer in determining outcomes to be achieved,
what public money is to be raised and on what public services it is to be spent (Lyne,
1996, pp. 1-6), unshackled of defining service outcomes through the constraints of their
own workforce, while officers row in recommending the best-fit delivery means. This
has manifested itself in recent times as a shift to a mix of service providers (Donahue,
1989; Walsh, 1995); sometimes the public sector, sometimes the private sector and
sometimes the third sector. The UK best value regime considers this choice of service
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delivery options to be procurement decisions (DETR, 1999) and they are recognised
within procurement literature as the make or buy decision (Baily et al., 1994,
pp. 187-200; Saunders, 1994, pp. 128-34; van Weele, 1994, p. 18; McIlvor, 2005, pp. 7-8).
These decisions are truly strategic procurement decisions (Cox and Lamming, 1997;
Ramsay, 2001), although previous research (Murray, 1996; de Boer and Telgen, 1998;
White and Hammer-Lloyd, 1999; Ramsay, 2001) suggests that procurement
professionals are unlikely to be included in these strategic procurement decisions.
Phillips et al. (2007) recognised, in their review of governance, that politicians were
likely to be held accountable for public procurement although the missing link of
good governance reflecting democracy in procurement strategy was not explored.
Equally, in their evaluation of the procurement processes within the international
research study on public procurement, Caldwell et al. (2007, p. 156) recognised that: . . .
public bodies and their procurement are subject to the particular need of elected
representatives who have to be concerned with image and votes, yet then failed,
through their evaluation, to report on any engagement of elected representatives in the
actual procurement process. As evidenced later, the predominant informant of existing
public procurement strategy and management research rarely, if ever, considers
politicians perspective as opposed to that of procurement managers, even though those
same officers are considered to be ignored from many of the strategic decisions.
Logically, if elected representatives are democratically accountable for public
procurement decisions, research, to be robust, needs to consider politicians perceptions
as opposed to only those of procurement managers who are rarely involved in the
strategic decision-making process.

Strategic procurement management

Taking a planning approach to strategy (Ansoff, 1985; Mintzberg, 2000), which is
typical in the public sector (Worrall et al., 1998; Joyce, 2000; Stewart, 2000), a tightly
scheduled, formalised and systematic approach is taken to identify a gap between the
organisations current position and the desired performance. To close that gap and
achieve the corporate objectives, hierarchies of strategies are developed (Ansoff, 1985,
pp. 45-7; Joyce, 2000, pp. 72-3) and cascaded to the various divisions, business units or
functions as their functional objectives (Leenders et al., 1989, p. 607; Baily et al., 1994,
p. 19; Hines and Rich, 1997; DETR, 1999).
 IJPSM It has therefore been argued that it is only after an organisation has developed its
22,2 core objectives that functional strategies, including those of procurement, can be
developed (Carr and Smeltzer, 1997). Assuming that a procurement strategy has been
developed in line with this cascading it is said to be aligned. Significantly Cousins
(1999) and Cousins and Hampson (2000, p. 238) argue that without strategic alignment
it will not be possible to effect change in procurement as a strategic function. It would
94 therefore follow that, if public procurement is to make a strategic contribution, it
should have strategic fit and be consistent with the issues important to the rest of the
organisation. A strategy pursued that is not aligned with the core objectives is said to
be dysfunctional.
Within the public sector the core objectives are set by politicians (Hill, 1974;
Osborne and Gaebler, 1993; Lyne, 1996); they make political choices regarding the
prioritisation and allocation scarce resources. Theoretically, those choices should set
the objectives of the procurement strategy, yet of the little comparative analysis of
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politicians and procurement managers priorities, Murray (2001a) demonstrated a lack

of correlation. That being the case, it is quite possible that procurement may be
pursuing goals at variance to those of their political leaders. For example, while there
has been considerable public procurement research devoted to the pursuit of
socio-economic goals (such as Murray, 2000; Coggburn and Rahm, 2005, pp. 23-53;
Bolton, 2006, pp. 193-217; van Valkenburg and Nagelkerke, 2006, pp. 250-73; Erridge
and Henningan, 2007, pp. 280-303; Walker et al., 2007) and collaborative procurement
(Baker et al., 2007, pp. 14-44; McCue and Prier, 2007, pp. 45-70), apart from Murrays
(2001a) tripartite survey and his case study (Murray, 2001b), setting out that it was
only through consulting and gaining the confidence of politicians that ownership was
gained of a procurement strategy, there has not been any empirical research to
establish that those priorities, on a case-by-case basis, are shared by the corresponding
politicians. It may therefore be that procurement managers are pursuing dysfunctional
strategies. While these scenarios are hypothetical, in the absence of research taking the
views of an array of key actors, and primarily those of politicians, how can it really be
known what the areas of increasing significance in the public sector are and how the
academic community really make the maximum contribution in solving the problems
of the future.
On a related theme, Thai and Drabkin (2007, p. 99), in a single case discussion,
which also appears to have lacked politicians input, found that US Federal
Government felt constrained by the lack of expertise of procurement managers to
address the wider political issues:
In the US Government there is a constant tension between a desire to divorce socio-economic
programmes from the businesses process of purchasing and the desire to achieve laudable
national objectives by both Congress and the President through the purchasing process. In
many case, the governments acquisition workforce lacks the technical expertise to
understand the implications of the socio-economic objectives and its impact on the product or
service being acquired and the terms and conditions for the goods or services.
Discussing the international research study on public procurements findings,
Callander and McGuire (2007, p. 315), in the context of changes in training demands,
while considering that it is also apparent from the cases that overt and covert political
demands, which are typical of the public sector, add an additional level of complexity
to public procurement compared to the private sector made no recommendations for
 political skills training or engagement with politicians or for the development of Public
politicians procurement skills. procurement
Procurement strategy must be aligned with those priorities set by politicians
otherwise procurement risks being dysfunctional. While public procurement strategy research
and management research espouses the pursuit of particular procurement strategies, it
is rarely, if ever, within a context of understanding political priorities. Equally, little is
known about politicians expectations regarding competences required of future 95
procurement managers.

Principal-agent relationship
Significant literature has been devoted to the principal/agent relationship in
procurement strategy and management research (for example, Donahue, 1989)
however, that research is presented from the buyer/supplier relationship and the need
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of the buyer, as the principal, to minimise the risks posed by the agent. Little attention
has been given to the reality that, within public procurement, procurement managers
take on the role of agent for elected representatives. Soudry (2007, pp. 435-6) recognised
this principal/agent relationship in a paper on how accountability systems have been
put in place. He identified that, among the possible risks, procurement managers may
show apathy towards politicians preferred outcomes or even overriding of the
principals preferences:
It follows that in the absence of effective control mechanisms, procurement officials are likely
to involve some personal preferences, derived from their primary interests, career prospects,
social contacts, monetary reward or merely aversion to effort, when making procurement
decisions . . . The difference between the case of public and private agents however lies in the
availability and quality of potential control mechanisms . . . in the case of public procurement
exercising control over agents is much more complicated . . . there is no homogeneous group
of principals to monitor the actions taken by the agent. Instead there is a diverse collection of
principals, composed of interests represented by pressure groups influencing politicians and
the general public (Soudry, 2007).
While Michael Barber (2007, pp. 312-13), reflecting on his time as adviser to former UK
Prime Minister, Tony Blair, viewed the Civil Service as presenting a constraint:
All to often though constraint . . . is through other means excessive risk aversion,
exaggeration of the likely difficulties, refusing to believe that what politicians have said they
want is what they really want, slowing down or watering down implementation and, last but
not least, simple incompetence . . .
An alternative, but complementary perspective, related to the principal/agent
relationship is that of respective roles of knaves, knights, pawns, and queens (Le
Grand, 2003). Knaves pursue their own interests, knights have no self-interest and are
motivated to help others, pawns are moved or controlled by others, and queens are
those with the most power. When public procurement research focuses on the
procurement manager, in the absence of the political dimension, it is affectively placing
procurement managers in the position of a knight but without a leader. However, in the
absence of a leader, is arguing that procurement managers therefore have the role of
queens, beyond the control of others? However, the critical factor within the public
sector is the supremacy of the democratic voice legitimised through the ballot box,
 IJPSM which being the case, as implied by Soudry and Barber, procurement managers could
22,2 actually be knaves!
Therefore, research has been skewed and failed to address how procurement
managers behave as agents of politicians. Do politicians view procurement as a major
risk, and how do politicians protect against asset specificity, moral hazard, first mover
advantage, etc.
96
Performance management
An effective performance management approach helps both the organisation and the
individual understand what is involved (Moran and Avergun, 1997) while usefully
embedding change (Johnson and Scholes, 1993, pp. 398-401). To be effective though a
procurement performance management systems must focus on measuring the correct
things (Speckman et al., 1994; Leenders, 1998; White and Hammer-Lloyd, 1999).
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There has been little specific discussion on public procurement performance

management. Reed et al. (2005) advocated that when designing performance metrics it
is important to consider the audience, even though in their development of metrics they
do not appear to have consulted with politicians. Erridge et al. (1998) provided a case
study on the application of a balanced scorecard approach; although that scorecard
included leadership and policy and strategy it failed to address engagement with
politicians. Like Schiele and McCues (2006) study, it appears to imply that
procurements customers are actually internal departments.
If these approaches to public procurement performance management are typical,
and there is an absence of literature to demonstrate they are not, it would suggest that
the needs of politicians are not only ignored in the design of the systems, but also in the
management of performance. Given the importance of strategic alignment and
procurement managers appropriately acting as agents of politicians, it could be that a
lack of understanding politicians perspectives compromises the integrity of public
procurement performance management, indeed it may be that, having ignored that
perspective, there is room for improving public procurement performance
management.

What role does existing research allocate to politicians?

The core of the argument within this paper is that public procurement strategy and
management research has generally overlooked the role and perspective of politicians.
However, given the above discussion, and the pre-eminence of politicians in the public
sector, it makes sense to consider how politicians are presented in public procurement
strategy and management literature.
Caldwell et al. (2007, p. 156), commenting on the findings of the international
research study of public procurement, viewed elected representatives as . . . concerned
about their image and votes. Lian and Laing (2004), in their comparative study of
approaches between UK public and private sector buying of occupational health
services, felt that the perceived restrictions of accountability to politicians were a
hindrance to managers. While Bayens and Martell (2007) noted the freedom of
procurement managers to make management decisions is constrained in that those
decisions must be within the goals determined by politicians prior to concluding that
councillors decide on the conditions of contract and the awarding of public works,
supplies and services responsible for initiating a purchase, supplier selection and
 contracts awards. Soudry (2007, p. 438) in a particularly negative view of politicians Public
argued: procurement
Ministerial control is fraught with weaknesses. Firstly, given the politicians limited time and research
expertise they are more likely to respond only to urgent concerns of affected citizens or
interest groups, or fire alarms, rather than conducting random checks on public officials
actions, or policy controls. Secondly, the technical capability of Ministers to absorb, examine
and make effective evaluations of information regarding the financial and professional 97
decisions taken by the bureaucracy is doubtful. Thirdly, as public choice theory teaches us,
politicians are usually subject to pressure stemming from lobbying by interest groups.
Therefore, the intervention of politicians in the bureaucratic decision-making process may
actually create more distortions and open opportunities for political corruption. Lastly, the
supervision of the bureaucracy by the political level involves excessive costs and may cause
serious delays in the provision of public goods and services, which is after all the main
purpose of procurement legislation.
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These perceptions, which appear anecdotal, view politicians as only being engaged in
discussions on the conditions of contract, contract awards and purchasing initiation,
while concerned about image; together with public accountability being viewed as a
hindrance, present a negative and very narrow perspective, yet there does not actually
appear to have been any research into the actual roles and potential roles of politicians
in public procurement strategy and management. Indeed, such perceptions of
politicians engagement with public procurement do little more than undermine the
very democratic process so fundamental to public procurement and highlight the need
for a wider understanding of how public procurement fits within democratic
governance.
Ironically, Murray (2007) demonstrated, from a small number of action learning
research projects, that, within UK local government, politicians, in collaboration with
chief officers, exhibited an enthusiasm and appeared to have the capabilities to be
engaged in strategic procurement management, specifically, determining the corporate
procurement strategy and mapping the procurement portfolio; challenging the desired
procurement outcome; challenging procurement delivery options; supplier selection
and contract award; and, post-contract management and review.

Limitation of research methodologies

If the role of politicians in public procurement is so critical, why has existing research
not reflected that?
A scan of the existing public procurement strategy and management research
methodologies literature reveals that key informants, almost without exception, are
procurement professionals there appears to be little triangulation of other actors
perceptions, particularly those of politicians. Thus we find, and only as illustrative
examples, that when Ogden et al. (2007) try to establish the differences in strategic
purchasing across seven American and European countries; Schiele (2005) seeking to
increase the meaningful involvement of procurement; Schiele and McCue (2006)
discussing the procurement of professional services, including major consulting
services of political significance; Lian and Laing (2004) comparing public and private
sector procurement approaches; and, Snider (2006) arguing of the need for procurement
to take on a greater leadership role; all base their research on procurement managers as
key respondents without any triangulation of politicians views. One potential
 IJPSM limitation of existing public procurement research methods is therefore that it suffers
22,2 from an in-built bias as a result of a reliance on a single group of key respondents,
procurement managers, without triangulating the views of politicians.
This is not to say that public procurement research is alone in this procurement
practitioner respondent myopia; it appears to be a weakness in procurement research
per se. For example, a recent special issue of the Journal of Purchasing and Supply
98 Management (Volume 13 Number 3) was devoted to Methods yet, in one of the two
core articles, Dubois and Araujo (2007, p. 175) acknowledged, with regard to case study
research, that The use of multiple respondents, however, appears to be a wise choice
in order to capture variety of perceptions and meanings, which could be seen as vital to
understanding complex business relations, although in progressing to set out five
rules of good practice in using the case study method, did not include, what could be a
sixth rule, ensure that cases are internally valid (Yin, 1994, p. 35; Schofield, 2000, p. 71)
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by testing the perceptions of a wide range of actors for conflicting and supporting
evidence. This issue appears to be a key weakness of procurement case study research
yet is not discussed at all in an article considering purchasing and supply management
case research methods. A parallel article by Batenburg (2007, p. 182) in the same
special issue on research methods, acknowledges that the organisational decision to
adopt e-procurement is frequently taken by boards and managers yet when
discussing the merits of quantitative research in purchasing and supply management,
he does not argue that research should consider that wider decision-making unit, for
example, those board members and managers.
van Weele (2007, p. 205) suggests that the single respondent bias has a simple
justification, namely, when it concerns research in the purchasing and supply chain
management domain, it is usually easiest to use purchasing managers as a prime
source of information.
A bias in empirical research leads to consequential weakness in literature reviews.
Therefore, for example, when Zheng et al. (2007) look at the future of purchasing and
supply management, including the public sector, they review the literature, but if the
available literature has left out one of the key actors, their literature review has a
built-in bias, which in turn suffers from the pitfall that they exclude any reference to
the political aspects of public procurement. We therefore end up with key political
issues, such as, market shaping, contestability, shared-services and third sector
commissioning being overlooked through no fault of those reviewing the literature. A
second potential limitation on existing public procurement research is that of making
use of literature reviews without critically reviewing the methodologies behind the
literature for weaknesses and omissions.
A further potential reason is that public procurement strategy and management has
tended to suffer from the Tyranny of Experience (Cox, 1997, p. 29), paraphrased as
assuming that the research mythologies adopted for private sector procurement will be
appropriate without adjustment, in the public sector, this is illustrated in that the scope
of the international study of public procurement was confined to the operational
aspects of selecting potential suppliers, contracting, ordering, expediting and
evaluating suppliers, and evaluating purchasing (Knight et al., 2007b, p. 6) these
are traditional private sector approaches to procurement research and yet fall short of
addressing the fundamental distinguishing feature of public procurement, the political
dimension. A third potential limitation of existing public procurement research is
 therefore its tendency to focus on traditional, private sector procurement aspects as Public
opposed to fully exploring the uniqueness of public procurement. procurement
Snider (2006, pp. 275-6) provides a further possibility:
research
[procurement] literature is generally introspective in that it is produced by members of the
procurement community in procurement-related publications, the principal audience of which
are members of that same community . . . basic procurement texts indicate that the field
essentially defines itself in a way that excludes it from participation in a major activity of any 99
organisation determination of need that may result in a procurement action. Through such
texts, procurement professionals learn to think of their field in a way that discourages them
from participating in strategic decisions and thus acting as organisational and institutional
leaders.
Therefore, a fourth potential limitation of existing public procurement strategy and
management research approaches, paradoxically is its focus on operational
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procurement as opposed to strategic procurement decision making.

Does this mean that all the public procurement strategy and management research
heretofore has to be disregarded? No, but, in some studies, a limitation should be
acknowledged that the findings were not triangulated with those of other actors, for
example, politicians, and there may therefore be questions of validity.

Conclusions and recommendations

This paper has argued that the fundament difference between private and public
procurement strategy and management, that of the political interface, has been
overlooked in research. The role of politicians is not fully understood and sometimes
presented in a negative light. Politicians have major responsibilities for strategic
procurement management as a result of democratic accountability, the need to set
strategic procurement priorities, ensure procurement managers have the will and
competence to deliver aligned procurement strategies, and in the performance
management of procurement strategy implementation.
Existing public procurement research approaches have limitations as frequently
there is an in-built bias and lack of triangulation through an over reliance on
procurement managers as the sole key respondents, carrying over the in-built bias of
empirical research into literature reviews through not critically reviewing the
methodologies behind the literature for weaknesses and omissions, tending to focus on
private sector procurement research attributes and questions, and a tendency to focus
on operational as opposed to strategic public procurement decision making.
To improve the validity of public procurement strategy and management research
there is a need to be more critical of potential responses from procurement managers
and look for triangulation from other actors, particularly those of the respective
politicians. Indeed, there is a need for more research on politicians perspectives on
public procurement.
Given the above, research would be of benefit which answers the following research
questions: do democratically elected public representatives believe that procurement is
not a political tool, is procurement politically maximising its contribution, is public
procurement an underused political tool, what are the actual views of procurement
managers with regard to the leadership of politicians in procurement strategy, is there
a difference between the procurement strategies of the political left or right?
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About the author

J. Gordon Murray DipM MSc PhD MCIPS AdvDipAM is a Programme Manager with the IDeA
(Improvement and Development Agency for local government). His research interests are in
improving public procurement performance. J. Gordon Murray can be contacted at:
gordon.murray@idea.gov.uk

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