Understanding the quality of creative services: How quality is defined and judged in public procurements

摘要

Public procurement of creative services is a complex area that is highly debatedwithin the industry. Each year public organisations in Sweden procure goods andservices worth SEK 600 billion, equal to one fifth of the Swedish GDP(Konkurrensverket, 2014a: 17). By seeking out and taking advantage ofcompetition in relevant markets, adherents of ‘New Public Management’ (NPM)argue that public funds be used in the best way. In public procurements, thetenderers are graded on different quality aspects and price. This is done in orderfor the contracting authority to compare the tenders and to preserve objectivity asrequired by law. However, when procuring creative services, quality aspects arenot as easily quantified as price. This results in a dilemma where the publicprocurer must judge abstract dimension, such as creativity, and translate thejudgement to a score or grade. The scoring based system complicates selectingcreative work for the public procurer since the evaluation of creative work is of asubjective nature and might only be described by the ‘gut feeling’ rather thanobjectively proven.Based on case studies, this thesis explores how the quality of creative services inpublic procurement can be defined, and how the quality of this work is judged.The case study includes two recent public procurements within design andcommunication. By interviewing both public procurers and tenderers, this thesisaims to provide a better understanding of the perceptions of quality and how thequality is judged.This study reveals that in public procurements, the quality of a creative servicewas found to be defined as a strategy that enables a relevant outcome, whichresults in an impact in a desired direction for the client. The quality was judgebased on the tenderer’s previous work, where both strategy and outcome wereconsidered. Different quality aspects were quantified in order for the judgementto be as objective as possible. However, the quality of a creative service wasconsidered to be immeasurable,1 thus the judgement relied on subjectivepreferences. This study sheds light on the unexplored field of quality judgementof creative services in public procurements, and is a contribution to bothacademia and industry. The thesis can serve as a basis for future research as wellas a useful tool when procuring creative services.