From the editor – Governments as buyers: the international business implications of public procurement

Abstract

This editorial takes stock of the importance of public procurement for international business (IB) and the research questions that remain. We argue that, apart from its traditional role of providing public services to citizens, public procurement acts as a demand-led policy instrument in which governments attempt to influence market outcomes by acting as large discretionary buyers and using their purchasing power and administrative processes to obtain policy objectives. We compare various financial and non-financial goals that governments aim to attain with public procurement and how they try to shape IB to achieve these goals. We also develop a framework to analyze how contracting firms and their global value chains adapt their IB strategies to optimize their chance of winning public procurement contracts.