Public procurement and EU tendering directives – explaining non‐compliance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to categorising explanations of non‐compliance of EU tendering directives and to report on a survey study to the impact of these reasons on compliance with the directives. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review resulted in a conceptual model and related hypotheses, pointing at four potential reasons for (non‐)compliance: the purchaser's familiarity with the rules, the perceived inefficiency, organisational incentives to comply, and the expected resistance and readiness of suppliers to take action in case of non‐compliance. The paper uses data from a survey among 147 responding purchasing professionals of the Dutch Ministry of Defence. Findings – The empirical findings indicate that both purchaser's familiarity with the rules and organisational incentives have a positive, statistically significant impact on compliance. Nor the alleged inefficiency of the directives, nor the expected supplier resistance seem to influence the compliance with the directives. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited in its setting: measuring perceptions of purchasing professionals within the Dutch Ministry of Defence. Future research could combine perceptual data and objective, measurable data on compliance. Future research might include other samples from other public agencies, questioning other respondents than purchasers, measuring factors from other fields and disciplines such as criminology (risk of detection and sanction risks), economy (costs and benefits), public choice theory (legitimacy), sociology (peer pressure), and social psychology (personal values). Practical implications – A managerial implication of the findings of this study would be that educating and training public purchasers will be an effective tool for increasing the compliance with the directives. In addition, public agencies could try to establish incentives in order to stimulate compliance. Originality/value – Although many studies have reported on the (limited) effectiveness of the EU tendering directives, little work has been undertaken on the compliance as such, while no empirical studies have been carried out to explain the (lack of) compliance with EU directives. This paper reports on a quantitative study, explaining the (non‐) compliance with the directives. The study could be of value to public policy makers, to public agencies, and to researchers in the academic world.