Five dilemmas in public procurement

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford P. McCue ◽  
Eric Prier ◽  
David Swanson
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Flexible Structures ◽  
Government Reform ◽  
The Public ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Operational Constraints ◽  
And Control

Procurement systems in democratic governments across the globe face competing demands, conflated values and goals, and are being called upon to address societies "wicked" problems under the rubric of government "reform." As a result, government purchasing professionals are being challenged to develop new flexible structures and processes that devolve purchasing responsibility, yet maintain accountability and control; limit the opportunity for fraud/mismanagement while reducing operational constraints; increase economic efficiency while satisfying political demands for minority/local/small and women owned business participation; increase open and transparent competition while achieving best value; and applying best practices while confronting legal limitations. Essentially these dilemmas have placed public procurement at the forefront of government reform efforts. The current study delineates the nature of five dilemmas that purchasing practitioners face, and the implications of these dilemmas for purchasing in the public sphere are explored. Given the complexity of these dilemmas, procurement professionals will be continually called upon to balance these inherent tensions with little guidance from policymakers or elected officials.

scholarly journals The corporate takeover of the online public sphere: A critical examination, with reference to 'the New Zealand case'

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Dahlberg
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Multiple Alternative ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
And Control

Much communications research is in agreement about the failure of mass media to adequately facilitate a public sphere of open and reflexive debate necessary for strong democratic culture. In contrast , the internet's decentralised, two-way communication is seen by many commentators to be extending such debate. However, there is some ambivalence among critical theorists as to the future role of the internet in advancing the public sphere. On the one hand, the internet is providing the means fot the voicing of positions and identities excluded from the mass media. On the other hand, a number of problem are limiting the extensiveness and effetivness of this voicing. One of the most significant problems is the corporate colonisation of cyberspace, and subsequent marginalisation rational-critical communication. It is this problem that i will focus on in this article, with reference to examples from what I refer to as the 'New Zealand online public sphere'. I show how online corporate portals and media sites are gaining the most attention orientated to public communication, including news, information, and discussion. These sites generally support conservative discourse and consumer practices. The result is a marginalisation online of the very voices marginalised offline, and also of the critical-reflexive form of communication that makes for a strong public sphere. I conclude by noting that corporate colonisation is as yet only partial, and control of attention and media is highly contested by multiple 'alternative' discursive spaces online.

scholarly journals Best Value Approach in Public Procurement: Improving ‘Best’ through Enhanced Preparation Phase

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-83
Author(s):  
Frank Steller
Keyword(s):  
Public Procurement ◽  
Customer Relationships ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
The Public ◽  
Innovative Method ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Preparation Phase ◽  
The Impact

The Best Value Approach (BVA) offers an innovative method to get the most out of Supplier-Customer Relationships (SCRs). This paper argues that the preparation phase should be enhanced when applying BVA in the context of public procurement. Literature on SCRs learns how successful relationships are governed bilaterally during execution. This literature also describes which processes are taking place prior to contracting. Here, the concepts of this literature areapplied to analyses the specific public procurement context. The impact of this context is, that the tender process is governed unilaterally. Further, BVA - as applied in public procurement - is viewed through the lenses of the SCR literature. Although BVA partly leads to bilateral governance, the impact of the public procurement context remains. For practitioners wanting to improve BVA’s effect in public procurement, the paper offers an enhancement of the approach. For theory building, the analysis leads to a further differentiation of the concept of governance. For regulators, it offers something to consider: focus on principles or rules?

How Do We Take Real-World Action?

We the Gamers ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Karen Schrier
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Real World ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Black Friday ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 5 describes how games can support real-world action and change. How can knowledge be applied to the public sphere and serve communities? Why and how should games be used to enable ethics- and civics-in-action? What are the best practices and strategies for supporting connections among civics, ethics, and the real world using games? The chapter includes an overview of why it is necessary to engage in real-world action. It describes the benefits of applying learning to real-world contexts and processes, and why games may support this. It also includes the limitations of using games to apply knowledge, and how to minimize those limitations. Finally, it reviews strategies that teachers can take to use games to take action and make change. It opens with the example EteRNA, and also shares five examples-in-action: Reliving the Revolution, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, Community PlanIt, Bay Area Regional Planner, and Thunderbird Strike.

scholarly journals Mediating Climate, Mediating Scale

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 159
Author(s):  
Anne Pasek
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
A Site ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
Modes Of Engagement

Climate communication is seemingly stuck in a double bind. The problem of global warming requires inherently trans-scalar modes of engagement, encompassing times and spaces that exceed local frames of experience and meaning. Climate media must therefore negotiate representational extremes that risk overwhelming their audience with the immensity of the problem or rendering it falsely manageable at a local scale. The task of visualizing climate is thus often torn between scales germane to the problem and scales germane to individuals. In this paper I examine how this scalar divide has been negotiated visually, focusing in particular on Ed Hawkins’ 2016 viral climate spiral. To many, the graphic represents a promising union of political and scientific communication in the public sphere. However, formal analysis of the gif’s reception suggest that the spiral was also a site of anxiety and negative emotion for many viewers. I take these conflicting interpretations as cause to rethink current assumptions about best practices and desirable outcomes for scalar mediations of climate and their capacities to mobilize a wide range of reactions and interpretations—some more legibly political and some more complicatedly affective, yet all nevertheless integral to the work of building a holistic response to the climate crisis.

Communication Policy in Asia: Limited Democracy and the Public Sphere

1998 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Birch
Keyword(s):  
Mass Communication ◽  
The Political ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Communication Policy ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Ideal

Communication policy in Asia has been, and is likely to remain, a highly exclusive, non-participatory, localised means of expressing and maintaining power and control. If it defines democracy, it defines a very different and limited one compared to the ideal envisioned, for example, by Habermas. This paper explores some of the issues involved, particularly with respect to communication policy studies in Asia, and argues for an approach to the development of communication studies and theory which is prepared to engage with the political and economic rather than just with the technical and social as is still the case with so many ‘mass communication’ approaches.

Fear Control in Media Discourse

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-219
Author(s):  
Davor Marko
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Public Language ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Control

This article deals with how fear is misused in media discourse. Pursuing the claim that it is impossible to eliminate fear from the public sphere, this paper argues that fear control is a technique widely used by certain interest groups to generate and spread uncertainty among people in order to create an atmosphere in which their goals are easily reachable. This paper will discuss the concepts of discourse, hegemony, and power relations in order to show how public language (both written and spoken) in media discourse reflects, creates, and maintains power relations. In this sense, fear, which is a crucial “energizing fuel” of such public language, could be considered and further elaborated as both a contextual variable and as a tool for facilitating power relations by applying various techniques. Aiming to show how media use and control the nature and level of fear in public discourse, I will discuss two techniques – the commercialization of fear and the method of “othering.” While commercialization implies the mass (re)production and (re)appropriation of fear in a public space, “othering” has been applied when the object of reporting is an out-group individual or community and self-group is using the media as a tool for their negative portrayal, thus creating boundaries and provoking discrimination and violence. The case of Serbia will be used to indicate how techniques of “othering,” linked with the regime’s propaganda, may contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of fear, and make a people seek protection and become easy prey for manipulation.

scholarly journals McDonaldization in Households

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Paul Woolridge ◽  
Leslie Stanley-Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
Video Survey ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Using Data ◽  
And Control

<p>Using data collected over three years and mimicking the methodology of Arnold et al. (2012) in Los Angeles, a study in Texas was conducted in which 66 families opened their homes and allowed video, survey data, and pictorial evidence to be collected. These data are used to determine if McDonaldization has spread from the public sphere into the private sphere by determining if the four factors of McDonaldization: predictability, calculability, efficiency, and control are present, and if so, in what ways they are represented. Ultimately, every single household studied showed instances of all four factors of McDonaldization, thus heavily supporting the hypothesis that McDonaldization has encroached into the private sphere. This phenomenon will be explained by using McDonaldization either as a rational means to pursue individualistic self-actualization as described through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs or as a means by corporations to extend their own factor of control into the private sphere and thus influence consumers. Finally, the fifth factor of McDonaldization, irrationality emerging from rationality, was examined with examples provided. </p>

Abusing Public Visual History

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public History ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ethical Codes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Illustrated Press ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Visual History

The covers of the two mainstream right-wing magazines in Poland, (W) Sieci and Do Rzeczy, have put numerous images on display that refer to well-known events from the past. However, most of the images suggest incorrect interpretations or even falsify historical facts. Asserting that visual history as presented in the illustrated press belongs to the field of public history, the author discusses the consequences of such a deceptive use of history in the public sphere. The article challenges the affirmative approach of public history by showing that scholars should pay more attention to those who ignore ethical codes and do not follow what are considered to be best practices.

Dress and Gulf imagery in two Malayalam films: Pathemari and Marubhoomiyile Aana

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Musthafa Mubashir ◽  
M. Shuaib Mohamed Haneef
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Semiotic Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Power And Control ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Control

Malayalam films since the 1970s have captured the history of Gulf migration from Kerala, which occurs primarily due to the desperate need of its people for jobs and for money. Predominantly, the discourses of migrants in the films are embedded in various things, including dress from the Gulf, the insignia of opulence that depict the status of the migrants in the public sphere. Using thematic analysis of two Malayalam films, Pathemari and Marubhoomiyile Aana, this study argues that the motif of the Gulf is associated with power and control in the cultural discourse of Kerala. Drawing on the semiotic analysis of Barthes, we contend that the replacement of mundu, a traditional attire of Kerala men, by trousers, is one among several mythical markers of modernity, including perfumes and watches brought from the Gulf. The performativity and materiality of dress in these two films produce imageries of the Gulf by which the wearers, mostly male, accumulate social and symbolic capital and assert dominance in the film’s narration.

Can public procurement be strategic? A future agenda proposition

2019 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Guarnieri ◽  
Ricardo Corrêa Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Web Of Science ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Supplier Management ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Best Value ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Basic Protocol ◽  
Strategic Procurement

Purpose This paper aims to demonstrate how public procurement can be strategic. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted following the protocol from Pagani, Kovaleski and Resende (2015), called Methodi Ordinatio, to select the relevant literature on this topic. The analysis of papers selected was carried out following the procedures of categorical content analysis (Bardin, 1977). Findings In all, 68 full papers were analyzed from Science Direct and Web of Science. The results present the main characteristics of publications analyzed and the authors propose some categories of strategic practices related to public procurement that are in turn related to: sustainability, partnerships and supplier management, information systems and technology and other issues. Research limitations/implications The main limitations of this paper are: the publication period considered of the articles selected is from January 2012 to March 2017; the databases Science Direct and Web of Science are selected as the sources of articles; the Methodi Ordinatio is used as the basic protocol of the SLR and, consequently, the inclusion and exclusion criteria described in the steps of the protocol are used. Practical implications Showing how the public procurement can be strategic, this paper highlights the benefits of best procurement practices; similarly, it highlights those practices adopted by the private sector, which can highly contribute to the creation of value in public services that are aligned with the concept of obtaining “the best value for money”. Social implications The incorporation of strategic practices in public procurement can result in the best expenditure of public resources and the reduction of corruption in the process of procurement. Originality/value This paper contributes to synthesize the knowledge on strategic procurement, a topic exploited by few people in the public organizations. It differentiates from other literature reviews already published, considering that these studies do not deal, specifically, with public procurement and, also, do not use protocols of SLR. Moreover, this paper indicates a future agenda of research, which can aid researchers and practitioners acting in this field of knowledge.

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