Willingness to adopt e-procurement to reduce corruption

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on research that evaluates the perceived willingness of potential bidders to adopt public e-procurement for the supply of goods and services to the government of Nepal. The authors have identified anti-corruption attributes through an extensive literature review and developed a theoretical model representing the impact of four latent variables, monopoly of power, information asymmetry, trust and transparency and accountability on the dependent variable, the intent-to-adopt e-procurement (ITA). Design/methodology/approach – Data for this research were obtained by the use of a questionnaire survey of bidders who were officially registered with the Government of Nepal. As part of the fieldwork for this research, the first author collected the perceptions of 220 bidders regarding the potential of public e-procurement to reduce corruption in public procurement processes. Findings – The findings suggest that a high level of the ITA has a positive and significant relationship with the independent variables that might inform the developed and emerging countries to make a decision to adoption of e-procurement to combat corruption in public procurement. Research limitations/implications – This study has some limitations that should be taken into consideration. The evaluation of anti-corruption factors, as they affect the willingness of users to adopt e-procurement on the bidder’s perception research model is relatively new to e-procurement research. A limitation of the research was that it gathered and analyzed data from a single country with a limited number of respondents. More research is needed to identify the anti-corruption factors of e-procurement in reducing corruption, and also need strong empirical test to valid the factors that influence the adoption of e-procurement. Originality/value – This study aimed to contribute to the academic scholar, government agencies and public procurement practitioner in enhancing their understanding of the perceived anti-corruption factors of public e-procurement to reduce corruption.

The Implementation of E-procurement System: Indonesia Evidence

“…The bidders can not submit bidding documents and be ignored by public official because of bidder's influence. According to [3], public official and bidders involve directly or indirectly to create a monopoly power in procurement process. According to KPK, ineffective budget and collusion emerge fraud in government procurement process [12].…”

“…The weakness can be used by vendors/suppliers to bribe the public official to select or appoint FourA 2016 10004 (2017) their company as a vendor that provide goods or services. It makes the procurement system is not transparent and accountable [3].…”

“…The implementation of e-procurement can improve the effectiveness and efficiency over traditional process [4]. E-procurement is also implemented to reduce the opportunity of occurrence of fraud in government area [3].…”

“…As explained by [3], government must create and implement e-procurement system to combat several fraud issues such as monopoly power of government and information asymmetry. Transparency, accountability, and trust are the main issues.…”

“…E-procurement is an online system that can streamline the procurement process [1]. The potential benefits of e-procurement are greater transparency and improve accountability [2] and reducing corruption risks [3]. The Indonesian government in 2008 has created INAPROC (Indonesia Procurement), a national e-procurement system to procure and deliver goods and services electronically [4].…”