Public procurement practice to enhance technology and innovation development in Ethiopian construction industry

Abstract

Effectively utilizing public procurement as a tool to enhance different practices in construction industry needs detail investigation of each stage of the procurement. This would help to devise appropriate intervention strategies; hence, this study is aimed at investigating the practice of using public procurement to enhance technology and innovation development in the context of Ethiopia. A structured questionnaire was developed to evaluate the practice using a 5-point Likert scale. Major public clients and higher-grade consultants and contractors were selected for the survey. In addition, semi-structured interview was conducted to get detail insight about the practice. While mean score and T-test were used for the quantitative data analysis, the interview data was analyzed thematically focusing on specific objective of the study. The findings indicate that the public procurement practice is poor in promoting technology and innovation. The major attributes to the poor performance are associated with the shortfalls in the role of procuring entity at each stage of the procurement and suitability of the public procurement provisions. Considering the major attributes to the poor performance, a framework is suggested to improve the practice. The findings will be helpful to the public clients and regulatory bodies in indicating the potential intervention area.

Keywords:

• construction industry
• Ethiopia
• public procurement
• technology and innovation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge Construction Management Institute (CMI) of Ethiopia for funding the research project CMI/Cons002/2014EFY. We are grateful to the top management and the professionals at CMI for the support given during the study.