Doctoral Degrees (School of Public Leadership)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (School of Public Leadership) by Subject "Business logistics -- Law and legislation -- South Africa"
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- ItemThe influence of procurement practices on service delivery : an analysis of government legislation – service delivery relationships in South Africa(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2019-12) Manyathi, Sakhile; Burger, A. P. Johan; Mortimer, Len; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.ENGLISH SUMMARY : The question that remains unanswered among public procurement scholars is whether public procurement prescripts and their implementation hinder accelerated service delivery. The public’s perception is that public procurement legislation is fragmented, rigid and difficult to implement. Perception further suggests adverse relationships between public procurement, fraud, corruption and service delivery. To ensure a better understanding of the phenomenon being studied, relevant literature was explored. Public sector procurement was defined as a process that involves hiring, purchasing or acquiring goods, services and construction works through contractual means in order to render efficient service delivery. It was found that, since public sector procurement operates within a tight political system, there is some level of interference with procurement operations. The relationship between public procurement and service delivery was thoroughly discussed, where service delivery was defined in different contexts and the researcher concluded that, although definitions were given in different contexts, “community well-being” was the epicentre of service delivery. The above relationship was supported by recent statistics on service delivery protests and the Auditor-General’s audit outcomes. An important take-away from this segment was that clean audits are meaningless if there is no service delivery improvement. Literature revealed that new public procurement reforms, including public procurement legislative consolidation are urgently needed. The reforms also included public procurement professionalisation, the adoption of e-government and e-procurement technologies. A distinction was made between procurement and supply chain management, while public and private sector procurement were also differentiated. Some similarities were noted, in that both private sector and public sector have a single mutual goal – to get value for money throughout the procurement process. The researcher discovered that the public sector does not perform supply chain management, it only specialises in one or two elements of supply chain management. Leenders and Fearon (2004:10) argue that supply chain management is a systematic process that facilitates the entire synergy between raw materials, services and information from the research and development (R&D) stage through to the end consumer receiving a finished product. The public sector rarely does R&D, nor does it develop, manufacture and market products and therefore only performs a few supply chain management elements, mainly procurement and some logistics management for selected government institutions. It is therefore the researcher’s submission and contribution that a single organisation cannot perform the entire supply chain management process as each specialises in either one or a few supply chain management elements. The study discussed how public sector procurement could learn from some of the private sector good practices, because communication, product flexibility and innovation between government institutions and suppliers is very limited due to some prohibiting prescripts. Types of corruption in public procurement and its effect on service delivery was discussed alongside measures to combat it. The researcher introduced the rule of law principles and good governance with its three key role players as new measures to curb public procurement corruption. South Africa does not have a public procurement act passed by parliament to specifically address public procurement operations. South Africa has also not adopted e-government and e-procurement technologies in public procurement operations. Furthermore, South Africa does not have an independent and impartial public procurement regulator; therefore, the researcher’s observations compelled the commissioning of case studies on three African countries, namely Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe which have operational public procurement acts, have adopted public procurement modernisation and also have operational public procurement regulators. The three case studies revealed three main lessons for South Africa on how the three countries managed, firstly, to enact and implement specialised public procurement acts years ago. Secondly, how they managed to promulgate and implement e-government and e-procurement technology policies. The third lesson was on establishing a procurement regulator to independently and impartially oversee public procurement in their countries. In an effort to answer the main unanswered question above, both qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied (using a hybrid research method) to ensure triangulation. Quantitative methods have a weakness as they do not fully understand the context in which respondents provide their responses, while qualitative methods often “push” the researcher’s ideas, which can be regarded as subjective. For these reasons the hybrid research method was chosen to make sure that the strengths of qualitative methods counterbalance the shortcomings of quantitative methods and vice versa. The study population was made up of public procurement employees, ranging from practitioners to chief directors in five major service delivery departments (provincial and national) of Health, Public Works, Human Settlements, Social Development and Transport, and one large municipality in each of the nine provinces. Since is it not possible to interview or survey the entire relevant population; the population sample was confined to 352 procurement employees. Survey questionnaires, interview guides and document reviews were utilised to collect data. Questionnaire data was analysed using SPSS, e-Views 9.5 and Microsoft Excel. All responses were graphically presented as per the questionnaire sequence. Qualitative data was analysed thoroughly, leading to the extrapolation of common themes that informed the thematic analysis in order to match commonalities in respondents’ opinions. The researcher ensured the validity, credibility, and high standards of data quality throughout the study. In this study, various validity measures were used to evaluate the respondents’ responses and opinions regarding service delivery and public procurement legislation. Construct validity measures tested how well the results correlated to the reviewed theories and study hypothesis. The study results were interpreted against the background of the main hypothesis, which suggested that “public procurement legislative practices have a negative impact on service delivery”, which was confirmed by the Chapter 6 results. The study discovered that the fragmentation of public procurement legislation delays service delivery because there is an absence of central legislative accountability to monitor procurement performance. Qualitative respondents also agreed and stated that “some of the prescripts are issued without consultation with public procurement specialists or practitioners in national and provincial departments, public institutions and municipalities”. Furthermore, the best procurement practices and procedures are not developed and shared across all government institutions. However, different views from senior Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) officials indicated that service delivery delays are not always due to fragmented legislation, but sometimes due to poor procurement planning, non-compliance and deliberate manipulation of public procurement prescripts. A common reason given by respondents was that “different decisions are taken in different places and levels amounting to unnecessary government bureaucracy.” The study revealed an element of political interference in public procurement, this is seen as delaying service delivery. The study recommended the establishment of a specialised National Bid Appeals Tribunal (operated regionally) with Chapter 9 institution powers, this is urgently needed to reduce litigation costs for both government and service providers. Although perceptions suggested that OCPO does not consider recent court judgments when issuing instruction notes; the study did not find any substantial scientific evidence to support such a notion with a combined 52 percent of respondents disagreeing. The National Treasury ought to establish a unit under OCPO to focus on the analysis of public procurement-related court judgments and advise lawmakers accordingly. The study also recommended a review of some legislation that hinders the full adoption of strategic sourcing in government procurement. The study is meant to assist National Treasury in properly managing wide consultation with all procurement specialists in all three spheres of government and by carefully drafting, consulting, analysing court judgments, promulgating and guiding the implementation of public procurement reforms in South Africa. In light of the above summary of recommendations, an efficient and effective Procurement practices versus service delivery normative model has been developed and proposed to achieve some of the above recommendations.