Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Previous studies suggest that aligning and translating multiple interests will stimulate government officers’ demands for technology support, such as the e-procurement (Hardy & Williams, 2008). This paper specifically analyzes the role of purchasing complexity on the adoption of e-procurement system in local governments and considering different degrees of centralization of the procurement structure. We focus on three central hypotheses suggested by the literature: 1) complexity of procurement is positively associated with the adoption of e-procurement systems, 2) the degree of centralization of procurement structure will moderate the relationship between procurement complexity and e-procurement adoption, and 3) compared to the fragmented procurement structure, procurement complexity will have larger influences on the e-procurement adoption in organizations with centralized procurement structure.

In order to test these hypotheses, take advantage of data from Survey of Sustainable Procurement in U.S. Cities. The data was collected and designed by Center for Organization Research and Design (CORD) at Arizona State University in 2017. This survey is conducted across states and focuses on the city-level sustainable purchasing activities. It contains 585 responses of directors from three different departments: finance, public work and environment.