E-procurement Adoption by Government Parastatals in Kenya: the Supplier Perspective

Abstract

Since the introduction of the internet in the 1940s, businesses have been slowly adopting to the e-commerce or e-business concepts that uses ICT to facilitate business operations. Eprocurement is one of the innovations provided for by the internet that has been widely accepted by different sectors worldwide and is therefore not a new concept. This study examined how the supplier attitudes, capacity, transparency and integrity affect their propensity to adopt it. To achieve this objective the study used primary data obtained from suppliers to Government parastatals in Kenya as at July 2013 through a questionnaire. A sample of 78 suppliers was selected but the firms that responded were 62. A regression model was determined to establish the relationship between propensity to adopt e-procurement and the other variables namely supplier attitude, supplier capacity and supply transparency and integrity. Pearson’s correlation and regression analysis were used for the analysis and the tests of significance were carried out for all variables using t-test at the 95% level of significance. The results indicate that the model examined in this study is significant with an R2 of 95% and that two of the independent variables had a significant relationship individually with propensity to adopt e-procurement. The results further show there is a strong positive relationship between capacity and propensity to adopt. The study concluded that attitude and supplier capacity can lead to adoption or non-adoption of e-procurement. Therefore it will be important for the parastatals to understand the relationship that exist between suppliers’ propensity to adopt e-procurement and attitude, capacity and transparency and integrity as they prepare to embrace e-procurement.