Means of efficient public procurement as per the regulation in the Czech Republic This paper focuses on the awarding of public contracts from the point of view of spending public money by contracting public authorities. In this paper, public procurement is approached not only in a way of common formal compliance with regulation but also in a way of economic balance, the latter being usually overlooked and thus the material point of public procurement, i.e. the efficient disbursement of public funds, is not achieved. There are two groups of mutually interconnected basic principles representing the material grounds of each of these two concepts. The first group is meant to secure fair competition whereas the second group's aim is to provide fundamental rules for the economical public purchasing by public authorities, including public procurement. Public purchase and its individual phases are analyzed and it is stressed that the resulting efficiency of public procurement depends also on the phases previous to the procurement procedure itself as well as on the phases following the conclusion of the contract with selected contractor. The initial theoretical part of this paper is supposed to show public procurement as a complex tool in order to satisfy the needs of a society where the mere compliance with...

Despite various efforts to introduce support measures and financial incentives to improve innovation in the public sector, it is widely perceived that the adoption of innovation is a slow and complex process (Albury, 2005; Coriat and Levinthal, 1990). Evidence of previous research indicates that the adoption of innovation varies considerably across public sector organisations, regardless of the perceived potential benefit of the new product (or service) (Cash and MOster, 2000; Edquist, 2005).The public procurement and innovation literature emphasises the potential of public sector organisations as important buyers and adopters of innovation, highlighting the role of public demand for the triggering and diffusion of innovation (Edler et al. 2011; Cunningham and Karakasidou, 2009; Edquist, 1997). However, innovation adoption in the public sector has been characterised as a slow and unpredictable process where the underlying institutional factors that play a role in the adoption process are not fully understood (Albury, 2005; Allman et al., 2011). The topic of poor adoption in the public sector is of great significance, not only for the innovation agenda, but also due to the increasing pressure on the public sector to achieve higher quality services with more efficient allocation of resources, particularly the NHS (Bonoma, 1985).The main objective of the research is to address the problem of slow and inconsistent adoption of innovation in the public sector, by providing a more holistic and institutional perspective to the study of innovation adoption, addressing the lack of context specific research on the topic. A major focus of this work is to understand the relationship between the adoption of innovation and institutions as a means to establish a more in-depth understanding of the institutional features that influence the adoption process. The research focuses on new technology procurement cases in the context of the English and Scottish NHS system, as two different institutional contexts, in order to identify the institutional features at the system’s and organisational level hat make a difference in adoption of innovation.

This PhD thesis looks at one of the most crucial determinants of state formation, quality of institutions, and social equality: institutionalised grand corruption. Institutionalised grand corruption denotes the particularistic allocation of public resources, that is violating prior explicit rules in order to benefit a closed network while denying access to all others. Emphasizing access to power and public resources deviates from traditional definitions of corruption resting on individual wrongdoing and abuse of power. The thesis makes use of large amounts of administrative data describing public procurement tenders on transaction level and links it to data on company ownership, financial accounts, and political office of company owners. By using data mining techniques it breaks away from standard, and arguably deficient, measures of quality of institutions and corruption. It proposes a complex ‘blueprint’ for measuring institutionalized grand corruption in the allocation of public resources and applies its key elements to three Central and Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. It is emphasized that these cases are only ‘pilot’ measurements, the blueprint is applicable to practically every high and middle income country, data is typically going back in time for 6-8 years. Using such a novel indicator set allows for an unprecedented detail of analysis. Results highlight the role played by European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds in increasing the prevalence of institutionalised grand corruption. This is due to at least two factors, first, they provide additional public resources available for corrupt rent extraction; second, they change the motivations for and controls of corruption. In Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, the first effect increases the value of particularistic resource allocation by up to 1.21% of GDP, while the second effect decreases it by up to 0.03% of GDP. The latter effect is entirely driven by Slovakia; in Czech Republic and Hungary even this effect increases particularism.

The paper analyzes public procurement process at the level of municipalities in the Slovak Republic. The introductory part of the paper is devoted to an analysis of theoretical and legislative aspects of the public procurement with definition of basic concepts and various procedural steps, which lead to the final implementation of the procurement. The paper also deals with the concept of 3E and degree of its implementation in legislation and in real-life process of procurement at the level of municipalities, with reference to some practical problems of that concept. The theoretical part of the paper is supported by an analysis of real-life public procurement processes undertaken at the municipal level and followed by evaluation using evaluation methods selected. At the end of the paper, proposals and recommendations that should lead to increase of effectiveness and economy in spending of public funds are included.

Public procurement is increasingly common as a tool for achieving environmental goals. In order to be effective, environmental concerns must be prioritized. The purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent environmental aspects of public procurement are considered and what changes need to be made in order to promote environmental criteria. Several previous studies have compared the environmental impact of various actors in procurement. This study is intended as an example of how environmental considerations in procurement work in practice. The main issues are whether there are conflicts between environmental considerations and costs, what prevents environmental requirements to be set and what changes can be made in the procurement process to create conditions for environmental improvements. Selected employees and politicians in one of Sweden's regions have been interviewed or have answered a questionnaire. The results show that environmental aspects are considered in most procurement, although conflicts between the costs and the environment are significant. Employees and politicians believe that from an environmental point of view their opportunities to influence purchases are good. The main obstacles regarding environmental concern in official procurement are insufficient leadership and lack of knowledge. Higher cost is also considered to be a relatively large obstacle. / Offentlig upphandling används allt oftare som ett verktyg för att uppnå miljömål. För att det ska vara verksamt krävs att miljöhänsyn prioriteras vid upphandling. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om, och i så fall i vilken utsträckning, miljöaspekter vid offentlig upphandling beaktas relativt andra faktorer för upphandlingsbeslut, såsom ekonomiska och kunskapsmässiga. I detta perspektiv diskuteras också vilka ändringar som behöver vidtas för att miljökriterier ska viktas tyngre. Flera tidigare studier har jämfört olika aktörers miljöhänsyn vid upphandling. Denna studie är avsedd som ett exempel på hur miljöhänsyn vid upphandling fungerar i praktiken. Huvudsakliga frågeställningar är om det finns en konflikt mellan miljöhänsyn och kostnad, vad som hindrar att miljökrav ställs och vilka förändringar som kan göras i upphandlingsförfarandet för att skapa förutsättningar för miljöförbättringar. Utvalda tjänstemän och politiker i en av Sveriges regioner har intervjuats respektive svarat på en enkät. Resultatet visar att miljöaspekter beaktas vid de flesta upphandlingarna, men att det finns konflikter mellan ekonomi och miljö. Tjänstemän och politiker anser sig ha goda möjligheter att påverka inköp ur miljösynpunkt. Det som främst hindrar att miljöhänsyn tas vid upphandling är otillräcklig ledning och kunskapsbrist. Högre kostnad uppges också vara ett relativt stort hinder.

The thesis deals with a topic of subthreshold public procurement on services in the Czech Republic in 2014. The main point of the thesis is to evaluate the effectiveness of the public procurement by analysing selected sample of the subthreshold public procurement on services in 2014. At first there is a brief description of general and legal requirements for the public procurement functioning. Secondly an analysis of the sample of the public procurement is made applying criteria as type of contracting entity or type of procedure. Then the influence of these two patterns on number of offers from contenders and also on savings of public financial assets is examined. Results of the regresion analysis say that there is a positive effect of the openess of procedures on creating the savings of the public financial assets.

This research investigates how public service organisations (PSO’s) use public procurement, referred to as the acquisition of goods and services by PSOs, to analyse the processes through which a PSO acquires innovative goods and services in order to improve public services. Despite a number of success stories from the literature (Phillips et al, 2007; Uyarra, 2010; Yeow et al, 2011), PSOs struggle to procure and implement innovation (e.g. Uyarra et al, 2014a). One major reason for this lack of innovation procurement and adoption is the nature of governance of the procurement process in the public sector (Rolfstam, 2009).Drawing from the public sector and organisational governance literature, this research develops a conceptual framework to investigate how internal, managerial and external governance affects the willingness and ability of PSOs to procure innovative goods and services. External governance refers to overarching bodies of organisations and institutions situated outside the PSO which influences policy and organisational arrangements of PSOs. Managerial governance refers to organisational actors and other stakeholders brought together to form governing boards which directly control and support the PSO leader. Internal governance refers to the day-to-day operations and delivery of a public service. This research adopts a positivist approach with a deductive inquiry process. Using the English secondary education system as the PSO under investigation this research utilises a mixture of quantitative (survey to two types of secondary schools in England) and qualitative methods (four case studies). The findings of this research indicate that these three governance levels influence PSOs procuring innovation in a number of ways. External governance can determine the decision-making process and what can and cannot be procured to improve the service and how budgets are used for innovations. External governance can also act as a source of expertise and knowledge, create opportunities and incentivise PSOs by establishing conditions, mechanisms and access to large scale programmes and initiatives. Similarly, managerial governance entails actors to act as gatekeepers in the decision making process, assisting in procurements by leveraging expertise from other positions and improving the chances of procuring innovation through partnership arrangements with internal governance actors. At the internal governance level, procurement of innovation is greatly improved when ‘champions’ support innovative solutions and when staff responsible for the delivery of the service (i.e. teachers) specify requirements. This research makes three contributions. Firstly, it develops a conceptual framework for public procurement of innovation (PPI) with governance at the centre. Secondly, it adds to the growing body of literature of PPI practice and the barriers faced by PSOs. Finally, this research pays attention to education, a public service sector that has been overlooked by previous studies. Consequently, this research may help policy-makers and practitioners to better understand the governance of PPI.

This dissertation studies how organized crime and corruption can penetrate the legal economy. In the first chapter I document the infiltration of organized crime in public procurement auctions in the aftermath of natural disasters. I focus on recent earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 2008 and 2016 and I utilize investigative data on participation in procurement auctions of firms associated with the mafia (in short, "mafia firms''). I show that criminal firms increase their participation in public procurement auctions in emergency-designated municipalities, particularly after relief status is declared over. Emergency status leads to a temporary increase in monitoring efforts, but a permanent positive shock to affected municipalities' reconstruction budgets, thus explaining the lagged effect. Using information on awarding procedures, I show that after the emergency the participation of mafia firms increases only in auctions with minimum discretion, suggesting it is not the result of collusion with local administrators. In Chapter 2, I investigate whether windfalls from natural resources increase corruption and how this varies across countries with different institutions. I utilize leaked information on the beneficiaries of secret offshore entities to construct a measure of malfeasance. I find that countries respond to a rise in the price of the commodities they export with increased incorporation of offshore entities in tax havens. However, such a relationship exists only for autocratic regimes. In Chapter 3, I develop a theoretical model to explain the role of political brokers in mediating clientelistic transactions between parties and voters. Brokers enjoy an informative advantage over parties: they observe the electorate's political preferences as well as their need for a private good (hospital beds) provided by the government. A party hires the broker to make a deal with the voters. The broker insures them against the risk of not receiving the private good when in need (sick) in exchange for their vote. The presence of the broker reduces aggregate welfare if parties focus on the electoral benefits coming from the provision of the private good and thus reduces the amount of public good (schools) below the optimal level. On the other hand welfare increases if private goods are delivered to citizens in need who would have not received them, had the broker not been present.

The aim of this thesis attempts to analyse two concepts connected with public procurement overpricing, competition effect and non-transparent effect. Dataset consists of 326 public procurement contracts. Existence of competition effect is proved, thus increase of competitors in selection procedure causes that final price decreases. Open types of selection procedures are also cheaper for public authorities. Analysis of non-transparent effect lies in possibility to find beneficial owner of each winner of selection procedure from public sources. Results show that companies with clear and visible owners realize public contracts cheaper than their non-transparent competitors. Findings are also discussed in public policy approach.

No description available.