Patterns of technological innovation in the use of e-procurement in construction

摘要

There is a consensus in the literature that the construction industry is slow in the uptake of electronic procurement when compared with manufacturing and other service industries. However, in the last two decades there is evidence of increasing use of web-based technologies in the execution of construction procurement activities. Despite this development and the expansive research output accompanying it, there is limited understanding of the nature of technological innovations in the use of web-based technologies in executing construction procurement activities. A systematic review of 102 research articles and seminal works from 72 sources published between 1978 and 2013 was used to identify patterns of technological innovation in the use of e-Procurement in execution of the six basic construction procurement activities identified in the International Standard on Construction Procurement (ISO 10845, 2010). Three dominant patterns of technological innovation, namely (i) the identification and adoption of web-based technologies and applications from other sectors (ii) improvement and use of already-known technologies in new areas; and (iii) the conjunction use of new and existing web-based technologies and applications in construction procurement were identified. These patterns of innovation were found to manifest most at the tendering and contract administration stages of construction procurement process; and are influenced by factors, including availability of the technologies, lessons from experience of users in other industries, nature of construction procurement activities, and the need to ensure efficiency in construction procurement process by procurers. The review indicates that although the need to integrate the six procurement activities, participants and different technologies appears to be the impetus for the different patterns of technological innovation in e-procurement use in construction, the inability to integrate the different web-based applications into a single system available to execute construction procurement activities constitutes a barrier to achieving this. Therefore, more attention is required in addressing this challenge.