Stimulating Innovation through Public Procurement: The Level of Awareness among Key Stakeholders

Abstract

There is recognition that more systematic efforts to promote innovation are needed to address the economic and societal challenges that public sectors face. Public procurement of innovation has not materialised on a large scale particularly in the developing nations and one of the factors is lack of awareness among the key stakeholders. This call for the rationalization to increase the attention of potential of public procurement as an innovation policy to policy makers, procurement practitioners and academicians. The goal is to investigate the level of awareness of public procurement as an innovation policy tool among the key stakeholders. The study adopted both exploratory and cross-sectional survey designs in investigating the level of awareness. The sample size was 249 and the sample technique used was purposive. The study disclosed that public procurement is recognised as an innovation policy tool by the professionals. This demonstrates that majority of the stakeholders are aware that there is a lot to enjoy when procurement activities are tailored towards promoting innovation. However, it became apparent that the Act used in conducting public procurement in Ghana is not specifically designed to integrate objectives like innovation and therefore innovation issues are not incorporated in the current public procurement. This is an indication that the public procurement system do not recognised the current public procurement act as a powerful tool to influence innovation processes at its current state. It’s for these reasons that effort must be intensified to remove all the bottlenecks surrounding the PPI in Ghana and to make it noticeable and workable. This has to deal with much education to the key stakeholders in the industry. Key stakeholders in procurement industry need to realise that both procurement and innovation is a very significant part of their work, as both may improve the services they provide in the long term.