How can strategic management, influenced by national cultural dimensions, be used to increase the efficiency of the Icelandic public sector? : a case study into Icelandic public procurement

Existing literature has explored the role and importance of strategy in today’s rapidly changing, volatile business environment. In addition to this, previous research has shed light on the moderating effect of national cultural variables on strategic management processes, highlighting its relevance particularly in the contemporary context of globalisation and multiculturalism in the workplace. Still, this correlative effect and its implications for business strategy have mostly been limited to private sector firms and thus remain largely unexplored in a public sector context. Simultaneously, while public procurement functions across the Western world are receiving increasing attention for their strategic initiatives, it has received little attention in Iceland, despite the consensus regarding its potential scale in terms of total public sector value creation. By conducting a qualitative case study into Ríkiskaup, the Office for Central Public Procurement in Iceland, interviewing eleven of the organisation’s employees, this study fills these gaps in the existing literature. Analysis and interpretation of the responses from these research participants confirmed previous research findings that national cultural variables do affect strategic management processes within organisations. That comes particularly with the notion that an individualist, less hierarchical and more assertive national culture such as the Icelandic one leads to a general preference for a bottom-up, consensus-based strategy implementation. Still, this finding comes with the caveat that due to these societal tendencies for individualism, a purely bottom-up approach is not realistic in an Icelandic context. Moreover, the results from this study confirm findings in the existing literature that public procurement is hindered in its shift towards strategic processes by a variety of internal, strategic and human capital factors. Lastly, this study concludes that strategic management tools are useful for transforming public procurement functions and the entire public sector towards more efficiency and a more significant overall potential for public value maximisation.

Author dc:creator

• Andreas Persson 1997-

Contributors dc:contributor

• Háskólinn í Reykjavík

• Viðskiptafræði
• Meistaraprófsritgerðir
• Opinber innkaup
• Stefnumótun
• Business management
• Government purchasing
• Strategic planning

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1946/39939

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:skemman.is:1946/39939