Employee Perceived Interference and Professional Ethics on Non-Compliance with Public Procurement Regulations, Evidence from Kenya

Public procurement is one of the governmental key areas which emphasises on the acquisition of goods and services. Governmental organizations across the world tend to spend between 8% and 25% of GDP on goods and services. Owing to the enormous amount of money involved and the fact that the money comes from the public, they demand accountability and transparency. Rules on public procurement have been enacted, however compliance by public procuring entities is still a challenge, hence the study seek to establish the underlying factors that leads to public non-compliance to procurement regulations in the public sector. An explanatory research design was utilized in the study, the target population being procurement officers of government parastatals in Kenya. A sample size of 119 respondents was used, which translated to a response rate of 90.2 %. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyse the data. The study findings revealed that non-compliance is affected by factors relating to; familiarity with public procurement regulations, employee professional ethics, and perceived interference. The correlation statistics also revealed that there was a positive relationship between dependent variable (non-compliance to procurement regulations) and all the dependent variables (employee perceived interference and professional ethics). This study has highlighted several recommendations that will be of use to public procuring entities and their employees to improve compliance with the procurement regulations in place. Finally the respondents in this study are purchasers; future study could include a sample of other respondents other than purchasers, for instance the tender committee members. Keywords: public procurement, non-compliance, employee perceived interference, professional ethics and procurement regulations