Effect of procurement planning on service delivery at public universities in Kenya

Abstract

Procurement in Kenyan public universities has been recognized as essential in.service deliverysince it affects how goods are procured and ensures tenders are awarded at the right time to ensure smooth running of the university. However, this has not been the case because even though most of the public procurement reforms have been achieved and procurement policiesandinstitutionsareinplace,thelevelofqualityservicedeliverybytheuniversitiesisstilllow.Thisstudytherefore soughttodeterminetheeffectofprocurementplanningonservicedeliveryamongpublicuniversitiesinKenya.Thisstudy wasanchoredbyagencytheory,resource-basedtheoryandknowledge-basedtheory.Descriptiveresearchdesignwasused. Primary data was collected using questionnaire. The target population of the study was 31 public universities in Kenya. The study adopted census technique since the population is small in size. A total of 31 Head of procurement department were the respondents. A multiple regression model was employed to bring out the effect of each independent variable on the dependent variable with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25.0. The hypotheses of the studyweretestedusingt-testwhiletheoverallsignificanceofthemodelwastestedusingF-testat5%levelofsignificance. The studyestablished a positive significant effect ofprocurement planningon service deliverywithregressioncoefficient 0.591witha p-value 0.000.The studyconcluded that procurement planninghad a significant effect onservice deliveryof public universities in Kenya and recommends that firms should do timely procurements. This study contributes to procurement discipline by providing a model that captures procurement planning aspects and measuring their effect on service delivery. Based on the study findings it is recommended that companies should encourage implementation of procurement planning for the business needs at an early stage