Determinants Of Implementation Of Preference And Reservation Procurement Policy In Professional Regulatory Bodies In Kenya

Abstract

World Bank economic surveys have indicated that Kenya spends heavily on public procurement with losses attributed to poor procurement regulations implementation being approximated at 20% per year. According to PPOA (2015) annual report, poor procurement practices like non-compliance to PPDA regulations have been identified as a challenge to the procurement process. This study sought to establish the determinants of implementation of preference and reservation procurement policy among the professional regulatory bodies in Kenya. The objectives guiding the study were: to examine the effect of information Communication and Technology (ICT) on implementation of preference and reservation policy in the public sector in Kenya, to evaluate effect of procurement staff professionalism on implementation of preference and reservation policy in the public sector in Kenya, to evaluate the effects of organizational culture on implementation of Preference and Reservation policy in the public sector in Kenya and to establish the effect of legislative framework on implementation of preference and reservation policy in the public sector in Kenya. The study was informed by the following theories: Institutional Theory, Public Interest Theories of Regulation, Resource Based Theory and Social–Economic Theory. The study used adescriptive survey as the study research design. The target population comprised of 116 managers drawn from the following departments in the 29 professional societies operating in Kenya; ICT department, Human Resource department, procurement department and finance department. A census was conducted on all the 116 respondents. The study used descriptive statistics such frequency distributions, percentages, frequency tables and pie charts to summarize and relate variables obtained from the administered questionnaires and inferential statistics of correlation and regression to show the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. The results of the study showed that Information Communication and Technology, procurement staff professionalism, organizational culture and legislative framework positively and significantly influenced implementation of preference and reservation procurement policy in the professional regulatory bodies in Kenya. the study recommends that for the purpose of improving implementation of preference and reservation procurement policy, professional regulatory bodies in Kenya should focus on various aspects of ICT such as low cost of setting up the ICT platform, compatibility of ICT infrastructure, availability of information on IT platforms, accessibility of information using online platforms, low cost of managing the ICT platforms and use of emails for procurement activities. The study also recommends that in order to improve implementation of preference and reservation procurement policy, professional regulatory bodies in Kenya should pay attention to indicators of procurement staff professionalism such as professional competency, procurement staff skills, procurement staff integrity, procurement staff code of conduct and procurement staff knowledge on procurement regulation.