Organizational Configurations for Local Government Procurement

Abstract

The efficient and effective management of procurement activities has a crucial impact on the performance of local bodies. Among the possible leverages in the hands of local administrators, the organisational design of procurement departments has become a strategic and critical aspect to be managed. Despite the literature acknowledges the importance of the procurement organisation (both in the private and the public context) for achieving better performance, it offers few insights on the possible organisational configurations for public procurement. Therefore, this study provides a review of the literature about the most relevant characteristics of the procurement organisation and, based on that, proposes a synthetic research framework. Next, using a multiple case study approach, the study determines six alternative organisational configurations of the procurement department in local bodies and investigates strengths and weaknesses of each one. Furthermore, results show an evolutionary path from one config...