FACTORS INFLUENCING ADOPTION OF FRAMEWORK AGREEMENTS AT NATIONAL IRRIGATION BOARD
Akello Boaz Okoth - Master of Business Administration, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Tom O. Kongere - Department of Management Science, School of Business, University of Nairobi, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Public procurement has had considerable focus on the value for money. Framework agreements is one of the procurement strategies that have been adopted in the recent past whose major benefit has been significant savings in procurement time, costs and other resources. As such, the purpose of this study was to establish the effect of selected factors on the adoption of framework agreements by National Irrigation Board (NIB). Specifically, the study sought to ascertain whether NIB adopts framework agreements in its procurement processes and establish the effect of legislative provision, procuring entity’s capacity, nature of procurement, pricing and urgency of procurement needs. The study employed case study research design and targeted all the 43 middle level and senior level managers in the five departments at NIB. The data used in this study was obtained through questionnaires which had closed-ended questions. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis. The findings of the study were considered important in formulating measures aimed at adoption of framework agreements in attempt to enhance procurement efficiency at NIB. The study findings revealed that framework agreements were not frequently adopted by NIB as indicated by 64% of the respondents. The study found out through correlation analysis that the selected factors; urgency of procurement needs (r=0.855), procuring entity’s capacity (r=0.855), nature of procurement (r=0.913), legislative provision (r=0.925) and pricing (r=0.930), had a strong positive relationship with the adoption of framework agreements. The study further established, through regression analysis, that urgency of procurement needs has the most significant effect on the adoption of framework agreements with its unit increase resulting in a 6.412 increase in adoption of framework agreements. In addition, the study established that, procuring entity’s capacity, nature of procurement, legislative provision and pricing, also affect the adoption of framework agreements with unit increases resulting in 4.249, 3.748, 3.500 and 0.936 respectively. The study concluded that the five selected factors affected the adoption of framework agreements by NIB and their effect was about 94.6%. The study recommends enhanced sensitization and training on the framework agreements to increase its adoption as an allowable and strategic procurement method for achieving procurement efficiency, careful preparation of pricing structure in framework agreements to ensure successful management and execution of the resulting contracts and best value for money and proper determination of entities’ procurement requirements and environment that suit the adoption of framework agreements to ensure desired procurement objectives are met.
