Factors Affecting Development ofE-Procurement in the United Nations Development Programme A Case Study of the UNDP Kenya Country Office - Gigiri

Abstract

Procurement is the acquisition of goods and/or services. It is favorable that the goods/services are appropriate and that they are procured at the best possible cost to meet the needs of the purchaser in terms of quality and quantity, time, and location. The Main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting the development of e-procurement in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Kenya country office. In addressing the problem, the researcher looked at the following objectives, government policy, effects of technology, financial resources and order processing. The study adopted a descriptive research design, with the employee's of the United Nations Development Programme - Kenya Country Office as the target population, a sample of 52 employees was selected using a stratified random sampling who were issued with questionnaire to facilitate the necessary data for analysis. Once data was collected, it was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential techniques especial correlation analysis. The findings indicated that Majority of the respondents were male between the ages of 31-40 years having worked for the organization between 11-15 years. Most of the respondents indicated that they had university degrees. Results from the correlation analysis found out that all the independent variables had a positive correlation with the dependent variable with order procesing having the highest correlation of (r=0.780, p< 0.01) followed by technology with a correlation of (r=0.737 p< 0.01) and then financial resources with a correlation of ( r=0.656 p< 0.01), government policies had the least correlation of ( r= 0.616 p< 0.01). The study concludes that all the variables have an impact of the adoption of e-procurement thus technology has an impact on E- Procurement as one of the main factors hindering the adoption of e-procurement in an organization is the organization's e-readiness level. The study recommends that it is important that the value creation of e-procurement is spread and emphasized that it is not only a web based platform and that it implicates in some beneficial changes to the procurement process. This is because organizations still face the change resistance towards e-procurement which can only be changed by showing the benefits an organization can gain with the new process, if the resistance is in the supplier's side, the same approach should be used and a training meeting should be added. A further study in another organization would be recommended to, compare the challenges of transition from manual procurement to e- procurement in a practical context