This paper describes the types of activities that were associated with meaningful involvement of municipal purchasing departments in the procurement of consulting services in Ontario, Canada. Included is a discussion of some of the key contextual factors found to enable meaningful involvement and the type of value that results as it relates to the needs of the client department and the overall goals and objectives of the municipalities as a whole. Ten case studies were conducted that involved in-depth interviews with twenty case study informants including ten purchasing agents, nine client department managers, and a consultant. The findings provide a basis for increasing the involvement of municipal purchasing departments in acquisition processes for these services and address some very important gaps in a particularly arid body of research related to local government purchasing. A number of testable hypotheses and research questions that may enable future researchers to address some of the gaps identified by this work are also presented.
Consulting services can be one of the most difficult types of services to purchase (Mitchell, 1994; Shetterly, 2002; Soriano, 2001). The purchasing process required for these services can involve major investments in time, money, and people with no real assurance of a successful result (Mitchell, 1994). Making these types of decisions effectively may in fact require a special set of skills not normally associated with public sector purchasers (Smeltzer and Ogden, 2002) who have commonly been referred to as a clerical, process-oriented function that adds little value to non-traditional purchase decisions, such as those related to consulting services (Gordon et al. 2000; Keating, 2002; Murray 2001; Pettijohn and Qiao, 2000).
These perceptions may help to explain why a study that surveyed 34 government organizations in the United States found that in terms of the total dollars spent on consulting services ($522 million dollars US) only five per cent (27 million dollars US) included any input from the purchasing department (Fearon and Bales, 1995). This involvement can be considered low especially when compared to other type purchases including office supplies, resale items, capital equipment, and printing services that for government organizations located in the US have involvement levels by the purchasing department of 100, 98, 97, and 92 percent, respectively (Fearon and Bales, 1995). Considering the importance of consulting service purchase decisions (Canback, 1999) and the value that can be associated with purchasing department involvement (Leenders et al., 2002) these low involvement levels may be an indication of a very serious problem.
This research involved the examination of ten cases where municipal purchasing departments, located in Ontario, Canada, were meaningfully involved (Johnson and Leenders, 2003; Stuart, 1991) in acquisition processes for consulting services. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-five informants including five purchasing managers, ten purchasing agents, nine client department representatives, and a consultant. These cases were used as a basis for addressing three primary research questions: How does meaningful involvement occur in terms of the types of activities performed by the purchasing department throughout the various stages of the acquisition process? What key factors affect this involvement? What value results from this involvement? Findings from these research questions are presented herein.
The findings from this research allow us to conclude that meaningful involvement is not an idealistic state but one that is quite evidently possible. While the activities performed by the purchasing agents for each case represent best practices they are not very different from those associated with good sound purchasing practice. This implies that other purchasers may benefit from an improved understanding of how meaningful involvement occurs, and offers much needed reassurance that good sound purchasing practice can in fact be applied within the public sector area and to a very difficult purchase category. This understanding may help to facilitate increased purchasing department involvement in similar purchase decisions so that they too can be positively affected.
