Authors: Hannu Torvinen; Lotta Haukipuro
This paper examines the roles of public service end-users in innovative public procurement projects. Innovative public procurement procedures aim to expand the responsibilities of supplier in the procurement and reconceptualize purchasing as a process of social construction between various actors. A key source for improving publicly valued outcomes of the procurement lies in user and community co-production. Even though the importance of user engagement has been widely acknowledged by public administration research, the discussion both on the means of engagement and role of service end-users has been limited. Besides scholars, the procurement practitioners tend to lack a clear understanding on who the client of the public procurement is and, therefore, do not know whose needs they’re supposed to satisfy. The purpose of the study is to improve understanding on the importance of different end-user roles for the outcomes of innovative public procurement projects. Our theoretical approach on the position and role concepts follows the research on business networks. Hence, the concept of position illustrates the expectations users are given by themselves and other actors whereas the concept of role represents the situation-specific character end-user adopts through sensemaking in the procurement process. The dual challenge for procurement practitioners is to understand both the nature of user in different roles and to interact properly with each of these roles. The findings are based on end-user engagement processes of three innovative public procurement projects in Finland with a shared emphasis on close end-user involvement throughout the procurement. Three kinds of data is used for the in-depth case analysis: semistructured interviews, public domain documents and participant observation. We suggest four situational roles end-users take in user engagement process of innovative public procurement projects: conventional, cooperative, collaborative and controlling Even though end-users in cooperative and collaborative roles can be seen most influential for innovative outcomes of the procurement, also conventional and controlling roles can be seen essential for creating value in interaction with different end-user groups and different stages of the procurement process. Conceptually, study offers a more comprehensive illustration of end-user roles in the context of innovative public procurement practices. The paper reasserts the dispute of viewing the public procurement end-user only through interpretations of either private sector consumer or public sector citizen.
Journal: n.a. (n.a. – n.a.)
Web Address: n.a.
Publish Year: 2016
Conference: Poznan, Poland (2016)