Mapping Corruption Risks in Public Procurement: Uncovering Improvement Opportunities and Strengthening Controls

摘要

Public procurement, which involves huge public expenditure, is a vital policy instrument and an important business operation of government. It embraces the active involvement of multiple stakeholders. Intricacies of procurement process, close interactions among public officials, businesses, and a multitude of stakeholders make procurement process analysis and modeling a complex exercise. Bearing this in mind, the present research aims to identify risks in public procurement and uncover the potential contributors and their interrelationships. The proposed methodology integrates grounded theory with fault tree and failure mode effects and criticality analysis techniques. The results identify several corruption risk factors and rank them according to their criticality. Interestingly, 45 combinations of risk elements were identified that may lead to unfair contract award. It also deduces important practical insights for strengthening organizational corruption controls and improving procurement processes. Further, this model contributes in opening up future research avenues for conducting improved risk assessment.