This thesis is dedicated to the financing of public community and voluntary association of municipalities. The theoretical part is focused on Public procurement, public administration, the cooperation of municipalities, the functioning of voluntary unions of municipalities and ways of financing public investments. The aim of the thesis was to analyze voluntary unions of municipalities in the Moravian-Silesian Region and to assess the financing of a specific project built within the voluntary union of municipalities.

The fashion industry is not only known for its creativity and innovation, but also for its contribution to environmental pollution, climate change as well as for social imbalances and poverty. Ecological and societal standards have so far only played a minor role in this industry for production and distribution as well as for consumers for their consumption and disposal behaviour. However, in order to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and prevent the maximum damage caused by pollution and exploitation, it is necessary to act more rapidly and consistently. Governmental control instruments can help to address those responsible, to regulate the market and to encourage improvements towards a more sustainable economy. The aim of this work is to develop a feasible governmental control instrument for the textile sector in order to provide possible solutions for some of the existing problems. Three different cases of already implemented policies in the food sector will be analysed and evaluated in order to detect the best-case policy with regard to sustainability as a basis for a derivation. The findings of the derived outcome will then be examined by experts in order to validate it. Finally, a recommendation summarises the findings of the literature review, the transfer of knowledge as well as the expert assessments. The result of this research paper is a control instrument derived from the food industry, which was evaluated with the help of expert interviews and has the potential to make the textile market more sustainable in the long term.

(angl.) The diploma thesis covers placing public orders, which represent a large amount of expenses of the public sector - approximately 14% GDP in the Czech Republic. In detail, it focuses on the area of ICT, which is often mentioned in context with overpriced orders. The goal of the thesis is to analyze processes of placing orders in public sector via comparison and qualitative interviews with adequate respondents. Based on the outcomes of the analysis, there are proposed possible new system solutions. The work also deals with applicability of the Agency theory in this particular area.

The goal of this thesis is to contribute to our understanding of the legislative framework governing public procurement in the Czech Republic. Using data from interviews, applying Game Theory and the Principal-A|gent model, and using the Goal Tree tool I show that individual actors behave rationally. Before submitting a tender they evaluate not only expected profits, but also possible corruption, threat of penalties. I also identify several practices used by actors in order to to manipulate public procurement. After evaluating actors' behaviour, developments inf public procurement legislation and of possible penalties, and drawing on extensive literature search I draw up recommendations for public policy. These t would help improve public procurement in the country, their efficiency, effectiveness and economy, without violating key public procurement principles (non-discrimination, equal treatment, transparency and proportionality). If adopted they would contribute to reducing the level of corruption in the Czech Republic.

The ability to bid for public contracts over the national borders is an inherent part of European Single market. In recent years, there have been efforts to further increase the rates of cross-border tendering by mitigating the administrative obstacles in the process - primarily the implementation of electronic procurement. In this thesis we found out that the effect of this measure is rather limited - evidence suggests that it led to increase in total number of bids, but the rate of cross- border awards remained stable, as well as a cross-border bidding. Furthermore, the fixed effects of European Union member states are analyzed to examine any evidences of domestic protection. The results suggest that the countries who joined the European Union in the last accession waves show the lowest rates of cross-border awards. However, no examples of direct domestic protection have been discovered.

The need to decrease emissions from the transport sector is getting urgent and public transport can play an important role in the transition to low emission fuels. To a large extent, public transport in Europe is provided by regional authorities who controls the traffic to a varying degree, from complete public monopoly to competitive tendering. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse how the organisation of the public bus transport market influences the introduction of renewable fuels. The focus is on understanding what the motivation is for the use of different organisational forms and what challenges and opportunities the authorities in a region encounter during the introduction of renewable fuels. Interviews with authorities in ten Swedish public transport regions show that when functional requirements are used in competitive tendering it will exclusively result in the cheapest renewable fuel available. Thus, if new fuels or technologies should be able to enter the market, either it will be necessary for regional authorities to take more control using specific requirements or publicly management, or the national government must introduce policy instruments that enable new renewable fuels to become competitive on the market.

I Sverige upphandlar den offentliga sektorn produkter och tjänster för ungefär 680 miljarder kronor varje år. År 2016 genererade detta utsläpp av 12,3 miljoner ton koldioxidekvivalenter vilket kan jämföras med Sveriges totala mängd utsläpp år 2018 som var 51,8 miljoner ton koldioxidekvivalenter. Offentliga upphandlingar bör bidra till hållbar utveckling genom att analysera inköpsprocessen på flera nivåer. Ansvarig myndighet för upphandlingar inom det offentliga är Upphandlingsmyndigheten som både har verktyg och metoder för att minska inköps- och upphandlingsprocessen miljöpåverkan. Då kunskap inom detta område är mycket begränsad var syftet med denna studie att belysa frågan gällande de utmaningar som finns med att ställa miljökrav inom kommunala upphandlingar. Studien genomfördes som en flerfallstudie med fem falldeltagare. Den datainsamling som krävts för att besvara studiens frågeställning har skett genom intervjuer med de deltagande kommunerna. Intervjuerna som genomfördes var av semistrukturerad karaktär och i varierande utförande. De deltagande kommunerna i studien menade samtliga att utmaningarna i olika utsträckning handlar om bristen på kunskap, engagemang och resurser och att utmaningarna kan variera mellan olika kommuner. Samtliga deltagande kommuner menade att miljökrav skall ställas i ett tidigt skede och att uppföljning är en mycket viktig del i arbetet med miljökrav. Deltagarna menade att storleken på kommunen kan ha en betydelse för dess möjlighet att ställa miljökrav, bland annat på grund av tillgången till resurser. Gällande lagstiftning menade de flesta kommunerna att denna inte påverkade deras möjligheter att ställa miljökrav. De övergripande förändringar som kommunerna menade skulle kunna underlätta arbetet med miljökrav inom upphandlingarna var att få tillgång till en stödfunktion vilken i sak också kunde variera beroende på kommun. Sammanfattningsvis visade denna studie att alla deltagande kommuner fann utmaningar inom arbetet med att ställa miljökrav inom upphandlingar och att det krävs förändring för att prestera bättre ur ett miljömässigt perspektiv. Detta bland annat genom det övergripande behovet av en miljövetande stödfunktion för att i längden kunna utföra dessa uppgifter utan att urholka den egna verksamhetens grundläggande arbete. / In Sweden, the public sector procures products and services for approximately SEK 680 billion each year. In 2016, this generated emissions of 12.3 million tons of CO2 eq. In year 2018 Sweden's total amount of emissions was 51.8 million tons of CO2 eq. Public procurement should contribute to sustainable development by analyzing the purchasing process on several levels. The responsible authority for public procurement is Upphandlingsmyndigheten, which has both tools and methods for influencing the procurement process to have less environmental impact. Since knowledge in this area is very limited, the purpose of this study was to shed light on the challenges of setting environmental requirements in municipal procurement. The study was conducted as a case study with several case participants. The data collection required to answer the research question was conducted through interviews with the participating municipalities. The interviews conducted were of a semi-structured nature and varied in approach. Participating municipalities in this study all claimed that the challenges to different extent were about the lack of knowledge, commitment, and resources and that all of these could vary depending on the municipalities. All participating municipalities claimed that environmental requirements should be set at an early stage and that follow-up is a very important part of the process of environmental requirements. The participants claimed that the size of the municipality may have a bearing on its ability to set environmental requirements, partly because of the availability of resources. In current legislation, most municipalities claimed that this did not affect their ability to set environmental requirements. The overall changes that the municipalities claimed would make the process of environmental requirements easier to use in the procurement process would be to add a supporting function which would vary depending on the municipalities needs. In summary, this study showed that all participating municipalities deal with different challenges in the process of using environmental requirements in procurement and that change is required to perform better from an environmental perspective. This is partly due to the overall need for an environmentally aware support function that can carry out the environmental requirement process in the long term without eroding the core purpose of the organization.

Procurement in public and non-public organisations has the potential to influence product development towards more environmentally preferable products. In 2003, public procurement in Sweden was 28% of GDP. Different types of approaches can contribute some knowledge and thereby facilitate the choice of environmentally preferable products. The thesis focuses on procurement in Swedish Defence. According to a decision by the Swedish government in 1998, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) and Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) are required to take environmental consideration in all phases of the acquisition process. The importance of a life cycle perspective is stressed in several SAF and FMV environmental documents. The starting point of this thesis was that environmental consideration should be taken in the Swedish acquisition of defence materiel, considering the whole life cycle of products. The aim was to produce suggestions for how this can be done. In order to make this suggestion some Ecodesign tools were reviewed and evaluated and two methods for simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) were compared. Suggestions of tools and methodology recommendations for environmentally preferable procurement in the Swedish defence are presented. For this purpose qualitative and/or simplified LCAs were suggested. The suggestions have been evaluated through interviews with actors in the process. When a simplified LCA is needed, the MECO assessment is recommended. Methodology recommendations for use of the MECO method in the Swedish Defence are presented. LCA is an appropriate tool for taking environmental consideration into the acquisition process, since it focuses on a product and includes its life cycle. If the environmental work lacks a life cycle perspective, there is a risk that the most significant aspects will not be considered. Four areas for use of LCA in the acquisition process were identified: Learning about environmental aspects of the product; fulfilling requirements from customers; setting environmental requirements; and choosing between alternatives. The actors interviewed were interested in using LCA methods, but there is a need for an initiative by one or several actors if the method is to be used regularly in the process. It is important that the results are communicated within the organisations involved in the procurement process. Environmental consideration should preferably be taken early in the acquisition process and environmental questions should be integrated into other activities of the organisations involved in the procurement process. Such work would be facilitated if there were greater cooperation between the procuring and environmental units, in this case at FMV, SAF and the Swedish Ministry of Defence. / QC 20100616

This thesis investigates how competition effects in government procurement auction are affected by the risk distribution between the procurer and the winning bidder. The risk distribution is linked to the conditions of payment which is assumed to be largely determined by the procurer. Thus, by investigating whether competition effects are different dependent on the risk distribution, this thesis contributes to the previous literature which almost exclusively model competition effects to be determined exogenous sources of uncertainty and characteristics of the market. There is a previous literature on the effects of various payment conditions in auctions but it mostly considers ex post moral hazard issues, and not effects on the competitive behavior at the bidding stage. An econometric analysis is conducted on auctions of infrastructure construction contracts held by the Swedish Transport Administration between 2010 and 2013. The results suggest that the choice of risk distribution can shift an auction from having no competition effects in bidding to strong bid-reducing competition effects. Seemingly, the procurer appears to face a trade-off between avoiding risk and enjoying bid-reducing competition effects. The difference in competition effects between contracts with fixed and more flexible payment conditions is found to increase with the auctioned project’s expected duration. In terms of government procurement policy, the results suggest that it can be cost-efficient for the procuring entity to share the risk with the contractor in risky projects instead of avoiding risk with fixed price contracts. Whilst this may contradict some common notions regarding government procurement, it is in line with the wide use of flexible payment conditions in private-sector procurement. Arguably, the recent decade’s increased ambitions regarding innovation and sustainability in government procurement adds even further weight to these policy considerations for the risk management of procurers.

Previous research has emphasized the importance of engineering services and adaptability in the early stages of construction projects. Public clients usually procure engineering services from private companies, which makes their procurement strategies important in creating incentives for adaptability and innovation for the service providers. Due to the high uncertainty and clients’ lack of understanding of the tasks they procure, the procurement of services is argued to be challenging – especially for public clients. Despite this, studies on the procurement of engineering services are scarce, as is research on the effects on adaptability. The purpose of this thesis, therefore, is to increase the understanding of organizational control in the public procurement of engineering services, by focusing on task characteristics, control modes and their effects on adaptability. A single case study of the Swedish Transport Administration was analyzed using the three models developed in the appended papers, i.e., the expanded control model, the procurement model for services and the classification model. The empirical data, consisting of interviews, observations and documents, were analyzed using visual mapping and flexible pattern matching. The findings illustrate that uncertainty is the task characteristic that differs between the early phase of construction (i.e., physical planning) and subsequent stages (i.e., tender document), while knowledge of the transformation process is the task characteristic that differs between a standard contract and an environmentally sustainable contract. Thus, when procuring engineering services including carbon reduction goals where new solutions are needed, new procurement strategies are necessary. In order to cope with the high uncertainty and low knowledge of the transformation process, social control is preferable. In addition, using social control will enhance the service providers’ willingness to adapt. These findings are important in the procurement of engineering services because uncertainty and the client’s understanding of the tasks are two of the main aspects that make engineering services difficult to procure. By combining task characteristics, control modes and their effects on adaptability, this thesis illustrates the importance of focusing on the entirety of organizational control. For example, even though process control and social control both incentivize the service provider to adapt to change, process control is less suitable for a public client when uncertainties are high. In addition, when choosing control modes related to the specification and reward system, it seems more efficient to provide the same incentives (i.e., process control may be combined with social control), whereas output control should not be combined with any other control mode. This shows the importance of combining the three variables and that the three main models of this thesis can be important tools. This knowledge and the models may therefore be useful to academics as well as practitioners. The results contribute to the scarce research on the procurement of engineering services for construction projects, as well as to the control literature. / Tidigare forskning har betonat vikten av tekniska konsulttjänster och anpassning i de tidiga skedena av ett byggprojekt. Vanligtvis köper offentliga beställare tekniska konsulttjänster från privata företag och således är deras val av inköpsstrategier viktiga, både för att skapa drivkrafter för anpassning och innovation hos tjänsteleverantörerna. Upphandling av tjänster anses vara svårt i allmänhet och för offentliga beställare i synnerhet. Det beror på de höga osäkerheter som kännetecknar tjänster, samt beställarnas brist på förståelse av uppdraget de köper. Trots det är studier kring inköp av tekniska konsulttjänster, likväl som effekter på anpassning få. Syftet med den här avhandlingen är att öka förståelsen för organisationsstyrning i offentlig upphandling av tekniska konsulttjänster, genom att fokusera på uppdragets karaktäristika, styrningstyper och effekter på anpassning.      En fallstudie av Trafikverket genomfördes och applicerades på de tre modeller som utvecklats/justerats i de två bifogade artiklarna med syfte till att illustrera modellernas användbarhet. De tre modellerna består av: en vidareutvecklad styrningsmodell, en inköpsmodell för tjänster och en klassificeringsmodell. Det empiriska materialet består av intervjuer, observationer och dokument. För att analysera dessa, användes tabeller för att kunna visualisera och en flexibel matchning för att upptäcka mönster i materialet.  Resultaten visar att nivån av osäkerhet är den karaktäristika av uppdraget som skiljer en tidig fas av en byggprocess (dvs. planläggning) och en senare fas (dvs. framtagande av förfrågningsunderlag). Däremot är det beställarens nivå av förståelse för uppdraget som skiljer mellan ett standardkontrakt och ett kontrakt som inkluderar lösningar för ekologisk hållbarhet. Således, när beställaren köper konsulttjänster med mål för ekologisk hållbarhet där nya lösningar behövs, olika inköpsstrategier är nödvändiga. För att kunna hantera de stora osäkerheterna och den låga förståelsen för uppdraget, är social styrning att föredra. Det kommer dessutom att öka tjänsteleverantörernas vilja att anpassa sig. Den här kunskapen är viktig för inköp av tekniska konsulttjänster, eftersom osäkerheter och beställarens förståelse för uppdraget är två av de huvudsakliga aspekterna, som gör tekniska konsulttjänster svåra att köpa in.  Genom att kombinera uppdragets karaktäristika, styrningstyper och effekter på anpassning illustrerar denna avhandlingen betydelsen av att fokusera på helheten. Även om processtyrning och social styrning föreslås för att ge tjänsteleverantören drivkrafter att vilja anpassa sig till ändringar, är processtyrning mindre lämplig för en offentlig beställare när osäkerheterna är stora. Det kan även konstateras att när beställaren väljer styrningstyp för uppdragsbeskrivningen och i ersättningsformen, verkar det mest effektivt att skapa likadana drivkrafter. Dvs. process styrning och social styrning kan kombineras, medan resultatstyrning inte bör kombineras med någon annan styrningstyp. Följaktligen visar detta på betydelsen av att kombinera de tre variablerna och de tre modellerna som presenteras i den här avhandlingen kan därför vara viktiga verktyg. Den här kunskapen och de här modellerna kan således vara användbara för forskare likväl som för praktiker. De här resultaten bidrar till den knappa forskningen inom inköp av tekniska konsulttjänster inom byggprojekt, likväl som till styrningsliteraturen. / <p>QC 20220425</p>