In the late 1990s, early 2000s, academic literature considered electronic marketplaces as a game changer in truck transportation services procurement. Early enthusiasm was followed by skepticism regarding e-marketplaces' usefulness and the popularity of e-marketplaces appeared to wane both in industry and in academic literature. However, recent sources argue that almost half of the freight currently transported by truck in the USA is subject to transactions conducted in e-marketplaces. This dissertation intends to fill a gap in the academic literature by showing that truck transportation e-marketplaces necessitate renewed dedicated research efforts, by exploring the strategies implemented by e-marketplaces in this specific industry and by linking these strategies to marketplaces' performance. First, transportation and non-transportation e-marketplaces are compared in chapter 2 with regard to their usage of mechanisms designed to generate trust among users. Results show that truck transportation e-marketplaces use these trust mechanisms differently than non-transportation e-marketplaces, which supports a call for research on e-marketplaces in the specific context of truck transportation services procurement. In chapter 3, a database inventorying the usage of 141 features by 208 e-marketplaces is then created to initiate the empirical exploration of these specific e-marketplaces. Thanks to that database, a new typology (a way of classifying objects based on several simultaneous classification criteria) is developed in chapter 4 that identifies three main truck transportation e-marketplace strategies (two with sub-divided into two sub-strategies). The typology provides a state of industry and puts in perspective the specificity of truck transportation e-marketplaces with regard to their structure along 11 dimensions known to the general e-marketplace literature. Finally, the link between e-marketplace strategies and performance is investigated in chapter 5. Performance is measured with three traffic metrics: number of unique visitors per day, number of page views per day, and website ranking. Results show that third-party-owned e-marketplaces that provide auction mechanisms with a fairly high level of user decision and transaction support are more successful than other e-marketplaces. This dissertation provides a picture of existing e-marketplaces for the procurement of truck transportation services, challenges components of existing theories and provides ground for further research. / Ph. D.

Purpose - The purpose of this thesis is to explore what performance indicators that exist within public procurement in defence sector context and how such performance indicators can be categorized.   Methodology - For the purpose of this thesis, an abductive approach was applied. This thesis is characterized as an exploratory multimethod qualitative research, which emphasize a single case study and a comprehensive research literature review. The empirical data was collected using semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary. The empirical data was analyzed using a data display and analysis, whereas a descriptive and content analysis was used for the research literature review.     Findings - Initially, a comparison between the conducted research literature review and the empirical study resulted in 117 performance indicators were abled to be identified. Furthermore, with support from the research literature review, the empirical study and the frame of reference, categorizations of performance indicators were possible. Through research literature review, the author were able to identify eight dimensions cost, quality, time, flexibility, sustainability, innovation, risk and compliance, all of which can be aligned to public procurement. Through the empirical study, seven elements were identified as categories. These elements include business strategy and development, operations management, category management, supplier management, customer management, procurement and expert and system support, all of which with aligned performance indicators.  Through the frame of reference, three decision-levels were used as categorization of performance indicators. The decision-levels could either be strategic, tactical or operational. Finally, a merger of decision-making levels and elements resulted in a conceptual model, visualizing how elements with aligning performance indicators within public procurement could be organized and structured.    Research limitations - At first, this thesis uses only one database for the research literature review, limiting the search result of publications concerning the research topic of this thesis. Secondly, single cases study within the defece sector, which limits the amount of information and may prevent transferability possibilities for other public procurement organizations.   Future research - From the result of this thesis, several potential research opportunities has been discovered. First, following-up and measure PIs in public procurement in order to justify the “real” compliance to rules and regulation. Another one is possible challenges with implementing PIs in public procurement organizations. Lastly, measuring process maturity in public organization would allow benchmarking possibilities among public organizations and defece sector procurement.

Background: When governments procure fighter jets from international suppliers, offsets frequently occur. In 2009, the European Commission issued Defence and Security Directive 2009/81/EC – a first step to incorporate the defence sector into the European single-market model. The regulation has changed the circumstances on the fighter market by limiting the use of offsets. Whether the fighter market, or the defence sector, is able to adjust to these changes remain unanswered.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyse the role of offsets in procurements of fighter jets, to get a better understanding of the present situation at the fighter market where the EU attempts to ban offset agreements.Research method: This study uses a qualitative method. Seven interviews with employees at Saab Aeronautics were carried through. In addition to the interviews, a literature study was conducted on defence markets, offsets and the European context. The gathered material was thereafter analysed with selected theories of institutional and transaction cost economics, as well as previous research in order to fulfil the purpose of the study.Conclusion: The study concludes that offsets can be seen as a by-product of the existing market imperfections and political transactions, and therefore a natural component in procurements of fighter jets. Certain forms of offset can be used by purchasing governments to neutralize existing market imperfections and lower the transaction costs. However, this is only one dimension to offsets since they may appear in several forms with different purposes and risks attached to them. The institutional change on the European fighter market will produce both winners and losers in the years to come. Whether eliminating offsets will lead to a more open and transparent fighter market remains ambiguous

Supplier networks today are seeing a complete redirection in their purpose from a decade ago. Supplier networks focused originally on transaction-oriented exchanges for sending purchase orders electronically. However, based on the current increased need to understand business risks, supplier networks are demonstrating a clear shift in emphasis from establishing “transaction-based focus” relationships towards the evolution of network platforms. The Aberdeen Group (2011) demonstrates that 76 per cent of supplier networks increasingly are being used to identify new suppliers and market opportunities. Moreover, with social-networking features similar to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (which are very recent phenomena), supplier networks have become more important in their role of spending management based on the ability to help organisations identify new suppliers while sharing information with other buyer organizations. Therefore, analysing data from supplier networks today has become a necessary strategy for optimizing transaction-focused procurement, in addition to improving supplier relationships. With this in mind, the Social Media Domain Analysis (SoMeDoA) framework has been developed to facilitate the decision-making process for selecting flexible suppliers within the e-procurement-based marketplace and apply it to a real set of data gathered from two social-networking sites (Twitter and LinkedIn). The research contributes a rigorous method that analyses effectively domain concepts and relations between notions from social networks and builds the domain ontology. The effectiveness of the framework, in analysing domain and relations, is evaluated by its application to varying datasets gathered from social networks, including the pharmaceutical domain. This model extrapolates findings from stages in the research and marries elements from various papers and frameworks therein, in order to produce a guideline model for organisations seeking a suitable supplier with whom to work. The results of the evaluation are encouraging, and provide concrete outcomes in an area that is little researched.

This thesis analyzes the problem of corruption in the Mexican government procurement system, aiming to provide a mix of legal and policy solutions to combat and prevent it. Comparing the policies and laws that make up the regulatory framework of public procurement in Canada and Mexico, this study seeks to extract the best practices that can improve the Mexican system. This text illuminates how the weaknesses within Mexico’s procurement system has provoked the current exploitation of alternative procurement methods (known as “adjudicación directa” and “invitación a cuando menos tres personas”) to embezzle public resources through fictitious contract awards. Although we have seen a tendency towards including requirements for “transparency” and “accountability” into Mexican procurement law, this on its own is insufficient to combat corruption. Consequently, I argue that procurement units have to enhance these transparency policies by disclosing the rationale behind every procurement and contract award prior to the disbursement of the resources; having competition as the maximum principle to fulfill while doing so. This will allow auditing bodies (and Mexican citizens) to scrutinize the rationale behind these disbursements. The Public Function Secretary could oversee this process to validate the legality and the social benefit justifications claimed by the procurement units prior to utilizing alternative procurement methods.

Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (Master), 30 higher education credits, 5FE02E, Spring 2012   Authors: Kateryna Zubova and Olga Arikainen   Tutor: Åsa Gustavsson Title: Procurement Process Integration in Swedish and Ukrainian Companies Producing Machinery and Equipment Background: Although the science of economics and logistics comprises a great amount of literature on supply chain integration, there is a lack of information on procurement process integration. Procurement process is one the supply chain processes and is one of the most important processes for manufacturing companies. Purpose: To describe the level of procurement process integration (PPI), tools of PPI and barriers to PPI from buyers’ perspective in Swedish and Ukrainian companies producing machinery and equipment, and then to test if there is a significant difference in them between respondents of two countries. Method: Web-based questionnaire was created and sent out to 500 companies producing machinery and equipment in Sweden and to 500 companies in Ukraine.  73 responses were received from Swedish companies and 49 responses from Ukrainian companies. T-test was performed in order to test the differences in procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies in terms of levels of integration, tools of integration and barriers to integration. Results, conclusions: There is no significant difference in the level of integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies. In both countries the average level of integration is medium that means long-term relationships which are reviewed periodically. However, significant differences were found in the tools and barriers to procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies.

Since the implementation of Government Procurement Act, the competent authority ¡X Public Construction Commission, Executive Yuan ¡X had set up 40 kinds of sub-laws and more than ten of related operation regulations so as to be the foundation of handling procurement for procuring organs and suppliers. The regulations of government procurement are therefore more complete. While under this circumstance, the dispute of government procurement is increasing day by day. What are the real causes behind the phenomenon? When the two parties had the dispute about procurement, it will incur numerous extra human and substantial costs. If we do not choose corrective approaches to resolve these disputes, not only the two parties waste resources, but also seriously impact the performance of dealing procuring dispute for organs. This situation will be more obvious to the port authority in our study that is located in the key position of sea transportation and transshipment. In this study case, the port authority will deeply suffer the dispute of procurement because it has to provide superior service for shipping company to match the tendency of vessels¡¦ type enlargement. This study explored the ever-happened dispute cases in a port authority and sorted out causes, types, settling ways of procurement dispute and performance of resolving procurement dispute from literatures, and then discussed with main professionals in related business fields to draft adequate questionnaire, going on survey to the members who real did the procurement duty in the port authority. This study got 105 copies of effective surveys, and then preceded factor analysis, correlation analysis, and path analysis to not only verify the hypotheses proposed, but also understand the practices and views of members in the port authority. The conclusions from this study included: 1. Most of procurement dispute happened in the stage of contract implementation. There is huge ratio of concerning cases from representatives. The usual way of resolving procurement dispute is through the appeal to Complaint Review Board of Government Procurement. 2. Different kinds of members got different cognitions in some dimensions. 3. The result of factor analysis shows that there are four significant factors, including perfect regulations, regulations¡¦ acknowledge, training enhancement, and complete documentation. But the primary factors affecting types of procurement dispute are regulations¡¦ acknowledge and training enhancement. Among all four factors, regulations¡¦ acknowledge has the most effect on type of procurement dispute. 4. Type of procurement dispute has positive effect on way of resolving procurement dispute. 5. Way of resolving procurement dispute has positive effect on performance of resolving procurement dispute.

For the past several decades, there has been a fundamental dispute between the appropriate mechanism for repeat procurement. On one hand, the supporters of Porter (1979) advocate a competitive setting where short-term contracts are used to increase buyer power and lower supplier prices. On the other hand, the supporters of Deming (1986) advocate the idea of long-term contracts to align buyer and supplier incentives. This trade-off between long-term and short-term contracts has fundamentally affected the practice of procurement, with most suppliers opting for hybrid strategies such as Incumbent Biasing: a strategy characterized by short-term contracts with frequent rebidding with an advantage given to the incumbent. This work examines this hybrid strategy to determine its effectiveness. First, we create an empirical model that identifies and measures the trade-offs between the Porter and Deming strategies. Using this model, we find that Incumbent Biasing has an impact on procurement performance via two mechanisms: first, Incumbent Biasing decreases bidding competitiveness in repeat procurement bidding, which decreases performance; second, Incumbent Biasing has a moderating effect where it improves incentive alignment between the buyer and supplier and improves procurement performance. We show that depending on the current contract design, the net effect of Incumbent Biasing on overall procurement performance can be either positive or negative. This is first work to empirically test the impact of Incumbent Biasing on procurement performance and the first to identify the positive and negative mechanisms by which this impact occurs. Using this research, managers will be able to identify their firm's position with regards to incentive alignment with their supplier to determine if Incumbent Biasing has a net positive effect for their firm. After identifying the impact of Incumbent Biasing on procurement performance, we contribute to the literature by testing this analysis through two additional extensions. First, using secondary data analysis we show that our construct for procurement performance is correlated with firm performance. We do this by comparing the answers to our procurement performance construct items to the change in gross margin of the publicly traded respondents in our study over time. This shows that our construct is not only reliable, but that procurement performance has a positive impact on overall firm performance. This is the first work to provide an empirical construct for procurement performance that is validated via secondary data analysis of firm performance. Second, we test a competing theory to Incumbent Biasing which is Multi-Sourcing: the strategy of spreading a contract to multiple suppliers to maintain competitiveness in bidding. Approximately $46\%$ of our sample identify as using both strategies simultaneously and we test for an impact between the two. We show that the two strategies to not impact each other and can be viewed independently. Subsequently, we test two Multi-Sourcing constructs in our model and find that there is no significant impact on bidding competitiveness from Multi-Sourcing. Subsequently, we examine the impact of repeatedly awarding a contract to a pool of bidders. In our model, one contract is bid repeatedly over time, resulting in bidders gaining information about their competitors' cost. The academic literature is mixed on how a buyer should approach this type of contract bidding interaction. On one hand, it is argued that establishing an awarding structure that favors the incumbent decreases the frequency of switching, and thus cost. On the other hand, it is argued that an awarding structure that favors the non-incumbent (entrant) bidders places competitive pressure on the incumbent and generates low margin bids. This issue is further complicated by the practice cited in the academic literature of ``defection', where entrant firms either perceive a bias or believe that their cost is uncompetitive and will not bid in future stages. We create a framework that explores the apparent contradictions in these recommendations and gives conditions when biasing toward the incumbent or entrant should be implemented. We first characterize bidders based on their effort to bid and their cost to supply the contract. We then show that in the case of low effort to bid and high cost for the entrant, entrant biasing is optimal; when the reverse is true incumbent biasing is optimal. Using the results from our analysis, we provide guidance to buyers facing a repeated procurement

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