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The study sought to determine the strategies of managing supplier relationships that engender value
for money in public procurement. An extensive literature study was conducted to examine the key
converging and diverging views of different authors in terms of supplier relationship management
strategies and trends in public procurement. The study revealed that long term relationships with few
suppliers are the best way of managing supplier relationships as there are more benefits to be gained in
long term relationships than adversarial approach. Nine State Universities in Zimbabwe were sampled
out for the study, with the sample size being 180. Policy implications and recommendations for future
study were highlighted.
Key words: Adversarial relationships, long term relationships, public procurement.
INTRODUCTION
A lot has been written in the relationship management
literature about the paradigm shift from adversarial
relationships to mutually beneficial relationships. Public
procurement is one area that lags behind in terms of
change especially in least developed nations. Most public
sectors in least developed nations uses a traditional
procurement system which is purely based on adversarial
relationships with many suppliers. Bid and bash approach
(Welch, 2003) is used in the tendering process which
focuses on the lowest bid and arms length relationships
with many suppliers. The contracts awarded to suppliers
have a fixed expiry date, which means that their relationships end on the expiry date of the contract and a new
tendering process will be triggered where potential
suppliers are prompted to compete between them again
(Christopher and Juttner, 2000). There is no attempt to
engage into mutually beneficial long term relationship
with a selected number of suppliers. This increases procurement costs such as multiple contracts administration,
monitoring many suppliers performance, continuous
education of suppliers on an institutions processes and
requirements. More time is consumed in the continuous
solicitation of potential suppliers each time the same
need to be fulfilled arises. There is limited utilization of
suppliers total resources as suppliers are kept at arms
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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Survey design, sample and response
According to Burns and Bush (2001), it is common that researchers
utilize multiple research designs and in this case the researcher
used exploratory and descriptive research designs. Exploratory
research was conducted to develop initial insights and to provide
direction for any further research needed (Malhotra, 1999). Public
procurement is a complex area with a set of processes, procedures,
regulations and objectives that are different from the private sector
procurement. Interviews and semi-structured questionnaires were
used as the research instruments to gather the research data. The
total population for the nine State Universities in Zimbabwe is 180
and it encompasses all members who are involved in the State
Universities procurement function. A total of 180 questionnaires
were mailed to procurement officers of the nine state universities
with a requested return date and a stamped return envelope. This
was based on the total design method (TDM) recommended by
Dillman (1978) that guidelines for mail survey structure, cover letter,
pre-survey notification, initial survey mailing and post-survey
reminder are to be followed. Only 97 questionnaires were
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arm's
length
Arms length
relationship
relationship
Long term
relationship
Both
bothstrategies
strategies
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