Loading...

Exploratory and Explanatory Research on Corruption in Public Procurement. A multiple Case Study in Four Subsidiaries of NIORDC

Ghadiri, Mohsen | 2018

559 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Ph.D. Dissertation
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 51041 (44)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Management and Economics
  6. Advisor(s): Sepehri, Mehran
  7. Abstract:
  8. Despite a rather long history of bureaucratic public administration, Iranian public sector has failed to catch up with the ever developing knowledge of fighting corruption in “public procurement”, a critical field of governmental management which accounts for at least 15 percent of GDP around the world. While international organizations like TI and OECD have been broadly active in globalizing the standards of integrity and calling for improvements in the national frameworks of procurement, a reductionist agenda might take the safest path of change by following whatever prescribed by those international bodies. However, there have also been some deeper reflections on the complexities of public procurement, mostly of a scientific essence, which might be of use for the developing countries like Iran, to go beyond the limits of west-biased norms of integrity and come up with some practical solutions to the internal problems of their corrupt procurement systems. Combining two qualitative methods of inquiry, Case Study and Grounded Theory, this dissertation offers a three-dimensional framework of theories to pose relevant questions on the quality of procurement processes and also deliver a reliable report of the contextual mechanisms of procurement corruption in the four cases of study. According to the results, the analyzed organizations are suffering from five main paradoxes which prevent their procurement functions from working with integrity. The first paradox is the result of keeping the procurement agents inactive, while the managers in charge are not qualified enough to direct the critical procurement contracts in a centralized manner. Based on the second paradox, the governmental supervisors simply imitate the legal – judicial style of supervision while they fail to be accountable in terms of their own professional responsibilities. The third paradox reveals the fact that regardless of what is being claimed in the studied organizations about ceaseless attempts to run the procurement contracts in the most frugal way, the levels of waste of public budget and resources is clearly high due to the lack of the qualifications needed to actualize economically best offers. Particular suppliers, based on the fourth paradox, enjoy an oligopolistic atmosphere as the result of the unjustifiable behavior of procurement authorities in violating the principle of competitive procurement, under the title of strategic decision making. Continuation of an isolated organizational culture not even related to the general practices of procurement agents has resulted in the last paradox according to which procurement enigmatic circumstances are just managed in a firefighting manner, while they actually demand well-defined guiding codes or principles to make sure that agents would be able to use their discretionary powers in accordance with public benefit
  9. Keywords:
  10. Public Procurement ; Corruption ; Public Sector ; Public Administration ; Patrimonialism ; Rentierism

 Digital Object List

 Bookmark

No TOC