Title: E-procurement and SME involvement in public procurement of innovations: an exploratory study

Authors: Jani Saastamoinen; Timo Tammi; Helen Reijonen

Addresses: Business School, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI-81101, Finland ' Business School, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI-81101, Finland ' Business School, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI-81101, Finland

Abstract: Current public procurement policies in the European Union (EU) seek to improve small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) access to public procurement, and emphasise public procurement of innovations (PPI) and aim to promote a switch to e-procurement. However, many information and communication related barriers impede SME access to public sector contracts, which could be mitigated by knowledge management (KM). While e-procurement is expected to increase the involvement of SMEs in public procurement, it is not well-understood how or which KM properties of an e-procurement service will best facilitate PPI. This paper presents an exploratory inquiry of how suppliers perceive the properties of an e-procurement platform, and how these properties are associated with their involvement in PPI. The results show that while information exchange properties were not estimated to be as important as other properties they are nevertheless more important in the sense of being positively associated with participating in PPI.

Keywords: public procurement; public innovation procurement; electronic procurement; e-procurement; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; innovations; knowledge management; suppliers; public sector; contracting authorities; information exchange.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPM.2018.092768

International Journal of Procurement Management, 2018 Vol.11 No.4, pp.420 - 442

Received: 25 Nov 2016
Accepted: 14 Apr 2017
Published online: 29 Jun 2018 *

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