E-Procurement and Performance of Humanitarian United Nation Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations in South Sudan

Abstract

Manual procurement processes are expensive in terms of human resource cost, purchasing cost, wastage due to errors of commission or omissions, cause of delay in delivery of goods, services and works which accounts for 40% of losses to inefficiencies, and attracts corruption in the system amongst others. The study was guided by four objectives: To assess the role of e-tendering on performance of humanitarian United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations in South Sudan. To examine effect of e-contract management on performance of humanitarian United Nations agencies non-governmental organizations in South Sudan. To evaluate effect of e-order processing on performance of humanitarian United Nations agencies non-governmental organizations in South Sudan and to explore influence of e-supplier management on performance of humanitarian United Nations agencies non-governmental organizations in South Sudan. The study methodology adopted explanatory research design of cross-sectional type for the population under study. There were over 235 National Non-governmental organizations, 150 International organizations in addition to over 15 United Nations agencies, bringing the total target population to 400 organizations. This study targeted 400 humanitarian organizations operating in South Sudan. Therefore, the sample size of 200 humanitarian organizations operating in South Sudan were selected using stratified random sampling technique. Data was collected using structured questionnaires which was dropped and picked later or emailed. The data collected from two hundred (200) respondents was coded into statistical package of social sciences (IBM SPSS v29) data analysis tool. The researcher covered a total of 20 respondents for pilot testing. Content validity was also conducted while reliability was conducted using Cronbach alpha. The data was presented in inform of graphs, charts, bars for descriptive analysis. Reliability findings indicated that e-tendering had Cronbach Alpha Coefficient of 0.873, e-contract management had 0.852, e-order processing had 0.872, e-supplier management had 0.736, and performance had 0.859. All the variables had Cronbach Alpha Coefficients greater than 0.7 and this denoted that the questionnaire was reliable. Validity findings reported that KMO value was 0.623 which was above the recommended minimum threshold of 0.5. This statistic implies that the statements in the questionnaire were adequate. In addition, results of the Bartlett roundness test yielded a chi-square statistic of 41.373 and a p-value of 0.000<0.05. These statistics indicate that the statements were correlated and therefore suitable for further analysis. The study found that e-tendering, e-contract management, e-order processing, and e-supplier management have a positive and significant relationship with performance. The study hence concluded that e-tendering, e-contract management, e-order processing, and e-supplier management have a positive and significant effect on performance of humanitarian United Nations agencies non-governmental organizations in South Sudan. Based on these findings, the study suggested that all NGOs and humanitarian agencies should ensure they adopt the use of e-platforms in conducting activities relating to procurement. The study also recommends that the policy makers that make policies relating to humanitarian agencies and NGOs should formulate for them a policy that will enable them make use of the e-platform in conducting procurement activities without any limitations.