Investigating Factors Affecting E-Government Procurement ( EGP ) Acceptance Decision Among Nigerian Small And Medium Enterprises

One of the basic objectives of public procurement is to obtain the best value for money in the most efficient and effective ways while ensuring that the process is carried out in a manner which promotes competition, economy, transparency and accountability. However, efficient public procurement management has been a herculean task particularly in the developing country where procurement tendering process is characterized by high level corruption couple with external interferences. Corruption, which is feeding fat on lack of transparency, competition and accountability has not only resulted into waste of public funds, it has also denied Small and Medium Enterprises who are considered the engine room of economic development the benefit of participating in Public contract. According to Wekesa, Namusonge and Nambusa (2016), the advent of corruption in public contracting led to distortion of fair competition, waste of scarce resources and neglect of basic needs and services, perpetuating poverty. The most frequent argument for small firms is that they are a source of job creations (Ogechukwu 2011) and that there are various economic benefits to be derived when government buys from SMEs. (Zheng, Walker and Harland, 2006). This is because SMEs are able to adapt and change quickly and tend to be closer to their customers. (Pep rah, Mensah and Akosah (2016). According to SMEDAN/NBS (2013) Small businesses are categorized into micro ,small & and medium enterprises with micro units defined as any organization that have less than 10 employees and N5million asset, while small enterprises are units having between 10-49 employees and above N5million but less than 50Million in asset. Medium enterprises are defined to have between 50-199 employees and above N50million and less than N500 million in assets. While corruption is detrimental to business for all types of companyAbstract: Adopting e-Government Procurement in public contract has been advanced by scholar as a positive way of increasing SMEs access to public procurement market because it guarantees swift access to information, transparency in public procurement proceedings and removes bureaucratic bottleneck associated with government contracts. However, acceptance of the automated system of procurement by SMEs has been reported low in literature. This present study investigates three of the major factors that affect SMEs acceptance of e-Government Procurement in Nigeria. Data were collected using questionnaire from 200 SMEs owners and managers who were conveniently selected. Multiple regressions were used in analysing the data. The empirical findings indicate that cultural, security as well as legal factor affect SMEs acceptance of e-GP with cultural factor being the most significant predictor of e-GP acceptance decision. The study recommends that government must embark on massive enlightenment campaign to create awareness on the benefits of adoption of e-Government Procurement to all stakeholders particularly SMEs owners, ensure that the system is structured in a way that it will guarantee security and confidentiality of information and that relevant legal backing is given to the process.